
>—• ^^^^ ^c 



AMERICAN CRISIS BIOGRAPHIES 



William Lloyd Garrison 

by 

LINDSAY SWIFT 

Author of " Benjamin Franklin," etc. 




PHILADELPHIA 
GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



f 



Copyright, 191 i, by 
George W. Jacobs & Company 
Published May, jpii 



All rights reserved 
Printed in U. S. A. 



©CI,A2.Sl):j45 



To 

Edwin Munroe Bacon 

My Friend Through All Fortunes 

This Book 

is 

Affectionately Dedicated 



PREFACE 

This, like prefaces in general, is mostly an 
itemized acknowledgment of indebtedness. My 
first and pleasant duty is to state that this book is 
written conjointly with my friend, Henry Burro wes 
Lathrop, Associate Professor of English in the 
University of Wisconsin. The original agreement 
with the publishers does not, to my regret, allow me 
to link his name with mine on the title page. Two 
years ago, when the work was due and the general 
editor was courteously pressing me for the manu- 
script, I failed suddenly in health. Professor 
Lathrop then kindly offered to share a burden which 
I could not have borne alone. That the book at 
last appears at all is due to his generous aid and his 
ability to compass a task by no means easy. Each 
has so freely criticized the other that the entire work 
is really an expression of two minds working in 
reasonable harmony ; but it is fair to my associate 
for me to say that the last part is practically of his 
writing, while the first eight chapters and the final 
chapter are mine. Such is my gratitude to Professor 
Lathrop, that I sincerely hope we may share the 
praise, if any is given, and that all shortcomings 
will be laid at my door. 

Another deep obligation is to the monumental life 
of Garrison written by two of his sons. The young- 



8 PREFACE 

est and surviving son, Francis Jackson Garrison, 
besides giving me many helpful suggestions, has 
generously encouraged me to make the freest use of 
this important contribution to American biography. 
It is possible that I have availed myself too largely 
of this permission. If the present book shall tempt 
others and especially a younger generation to read 
the four volumes of this filial tribute to a noble, 
interesting and commanding character, it will not 
have been a vain task for IMr. Lathrop and myself 
to have written it. 

The manuscript has, to my great satisfaction and 
peace of mind, passed under the critical inspection 
of two friends, Mr. Edwin M. Bacon and Miss Mary 
H. Rollins, who have my deep thanks. 

It would be ungracious to omit a word of gratitude 
for the help, impersonal to be sure but no less real, 
received from the collections of the Boston Public 
Library and especially from the anti-slavery archives 
therein deposited mainly by the Garrison family. 

I cannot pretend that I have burrowed deep in 
* * original sources. ' ' Exhaustive research in hitherto 
untouched documents and manuscripts was not nec- 
essary to the formation of a fairly clear estimate. 
There are singularly few historical tangles in the 
annals of Anti-slavei-y and Abolitionism, and printed 
books, many of them, however, now forgotten, have 
served our purpose. 

The son of a Free-Soiler and early Republican, I 
entered upon the task with a feeling that Garrison's 
career might fail, in many respects, to satisfy one 
having such an inheritance. But as the work grew 



PEEFACE 9 

apace, most, though not all, of the doubts fell away 
and I came to see that the character of the man and 
the part he played in the vast drama of the mid- 
nineteenth century in this country, had triumphed 
over the misgivings which had at first beset me. I 
had insensibly reverted to the convictions of my 
paternal grandparents, uncompromising Abolition- 
ists and Methodist '^ Come-outers," and I was able 
to see with their eyes as well as with my own that 
Garrison and such as they who in a large measure 
followed him, were guided by eternal verities and 
not by policy. Whether they were right or wrong 
is not the question. I have come by slow processes 
to satisfy my own reasoning that they were sincere, 
and that they were necessary instruments in a great 
undertaking. Toward this conclusion my partner 
in the task happily needed no persuasion. 





CONTENTS 






Chronology 


13 


I. 


The Antecedent Condition . 


17 


II. 


The Tentative Years 


46 


III. 


Editor and Pamphleteer 


70 


IV. 


The Movement Made National 


98 


V. 


A Provincial Mob .... 


121 


VI. 


A Rift Within the Abolition Lute 


142 


VII. 


An Awakening People . 


163 


VIII. 


A House Dividing Against Itself 


180 


IX. 


The Infidel Garrison 


208 


X. 


The Anti-Slavery Disunion Senti- 
ment 


239 


XI. 


Texas and the Mexican War 


258 


XII. 


The Period of Compromise 


272 


XIII. 


The Irrepressible Conflict . 


308 


XIV. 


Last Years 


360 


XV. 


The Summing Up- The Outcome . 


371 




Bibliography 


387 




Index 


391 



CHRONOLOGY 

1805 — December 10th, born in Newbury port, Mass., of Abijah 
and Frances Maria (Lloyd) Garrison. 

1814 — Apprenticed to Gamaliel W. Oliver, shoemaker, in Lynn, 
Mass. 

1815 — Removes, by sea, with his mother, to Baltimore. 

1816 — Returns to Newburyport. 

1818 — Apprenticed to Moses Short, cabinet-maker, Haverhill, 
Mass. Runs away, is recovered, and finally discharged, 
returning to Newburyport. Apprenticed to Ephraim W, 
Allen, editor of the Newburyport Herald. 

1822 — Begins to write, anonymously, for the Herald. 

1823 — September 3d, death of his mother. 

1825 — End of his apprenticeship. 

1826 — Editor and publisher of the Free Press, Newburyport. 
Meets John Greenleaf Whittier. To Boston in search of 
employment. 

1827 — Compositor in Boston. 

1828 — Editor of the National Philanthropist. First meeting in 
Boston with Benjamin Lundy, anti-slavery advocate. 
Begins editing the Journal of the Times at Bennington, 
Vt., in support of John Quiucy Adams. 

1829 — Returns to Boston ; rooms with Whittier, Delivers his 
first public address against slavery at the Park Street 
church. Goes to Baltimore as co-editor of Lundy 's 
paper. First proclaims that slaves are entitled to " im- 
mediate and complete emancipation." 

1830 — Ti-ied for libel against Francis Todd and committed to 
Baltimore jail. Released, returns to Boston. Issues 
prospectus for Public Liberator and Journal of the Times to 
be issued in Washington. Delivers anti-slavery ad- 
dresses. 



14 CHRONOLOGY 

1831 — January 1st, first issue of the Liberator. 

1832— The New England Anti-Slavery Society formed, the first 
organization in the Garrison movement. Publishes 
" Thoughts on African Colonization." 

1833— Meets his future wife, Helen Eliza Benson, in Provi- 
dence, R. I. Visits England. Indicted for libel in con- 
nection with Prudence Crandall case. Drafts Declaration 
of Sentiments at formation of American Anti-Slavery 
Society in Philadelphia. 

1834— September 4th, married. George Thompson arrives from 
England. 

1835— Burned in effigy at Charleston, S. C. Gallows erected 
before his house in Boston. Victim of the ** respectable " 
mob in Boston ; committed to Leverett street jail over 
night. Dissolves partnership with Knapp on the Lib- 
erator. 

1836— Visits John Quincy Adams. Attacked by "Clerical 
Appeal. ' ' 

1838— Present at the mobbing and destruction of Pennsylvania 
Hall, Philadelphia. Helps organize Non-Resistance So- 
ciety in Boston. 

1840 — Schism in American Anti-Slavery Society over member- 
ship of women and duty of political action. Goes to 
England to attend World's Anti-Slavery Convention in 
London, but refuses to take part in the convention be- 
cause women delegates are excluded. Attends Chardon 
Street Convention, Boston. 

1841 — Tour in White Mountains with N. P. Rogers. 

1842 — First intimation of disunion policy. 

1843— Declares the pro-slavery compact of the Constitution " a 
covenant with Death and an agreement with Hell." 

1844— American Anti-Slavery Society adopts his policy of "No 
Union with Slaveholders." 

1845— Delegate to Anti-Texas convention in Faneuil Hall, 
Boston. 

1846— Goes to England on invitation of the Glasgow Emancipa- 
tion Society. Helps form Anti-Slavery League in 
London. 



CHRONOLOGY 15 

1847 — Makes his tirst Western tour. Is attacked with fever in 
Cleveland, O. 

1848 — Calls Anti-Sabbath Convention in Boston. 

1849 — Presents address to Father Mathew in Boston. 

1850 — Witnesses mobbing, by Rynders's gang, of American 
Anti-Slavery Society anniversary meeting in New York. 
Present at reception to and mobbing of George Thompson 
in Faneuil Hall. 

1853 — Mobbed at Bible Convention, Hartford, Conn. Second 
Western tour. Visits Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe at 
Andover, Mass. 

1854 — Burns the Constitution in public at Framingham, Mass., 
July 4th. 

1857 — Meets John Brown at Theodore Parker's house. At 
Worcester (Mass.) disunion convention. Joins call for 
Cleveland (Ohio) disunion convention. 

1863 — Celebrates Emancipation Proclamation, in Boston, Jan- 
uary 1st. At celebration in Philadelphia of thirtieth 
anniversary of American Anti-Slavery Society. 

1864 — Has an interview with President Lincoln. 

1885 — Celebrates adoption of the constitutional amendment 
abolishing slavery. With George Thompson at the rais- 
ing of the flag over Fort Sumter. Receives ovation from 
freedmen. Resigns presidency of the American Anti- 
Slavery Society, May 10th. Issues the last number of 
the Liberator, December 29th. 

1867 — Sails for London with George Thompson. Meets John 
Bright. Breakfast in his honor in London, Speeches 
by John Bright, the Duke of Argyll, Earl Russell, John 
Stuart Mill and George Thompson. Presented with the 
freedom of the city of Edinburgh. Attends International 
Anti-Slavery Conference in Paris as delegate from 
American Freedmen 's Union. Visits Switzerland. 

1868 — Presented with a national testimonial of thirty-one 
thousand dollars. 

1875 — Celebrates his seventieth birthday by setting type in the 
Newburyport Herald office. 

1876 — Death of Mrs. Garrison, January 25th. 



16 CHRONOLOGY 

1877 — Goes to England on bis fifth and final visit. Last meet- 
ing with Thompson. 

1878— Seta type in Newbury port Herald office on sixtieth anni- 
versary of his apprenticeship, October 13th. Dinner in 
his honor given by the 2s ew England Franklin Club (of 
master printers), Boston, October 14th. 

1879 — Opposes the Chinese exclusion policy. Dies in New 
York, May 24th. Buried at Forest Hills Cemetery, 
Boston. 

1885-89— Story of His Life, Told by His Children, issued in four 
volumes. 

1886— Olin L. Warner's bronze statue of Garrison erected on 
Commonwealth Avenue, Boston. 

1905— Celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, 
in Boston and elsewhere. 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 



CHAPTER I 

THE ANTECEDENT CONDITION 

The writer wjio essays the life of William Lloyd 
Garrison aud somewhat of its relations to and its ef- 
fect upon the national life, is not obliged to trace 
the black and melancholy current of slavery from 
its beginnings on this continent down to the mo- 
ment when he set forth to stem it. Furthermore, 
except in a brief and perhaps cursory way, it is not 
desirable to record the names of those who before 
his time were roused to utterance on this momen- 
tous subject; for, to the end of his career, in a 
strange aud impressive manner he stood aloof from 
the influences, political and social, which usually 
merge the efforts even of men of marked ability and 
force into the general channels of united purpose. 
Were it not for Emerson and John Brown, he might 
almost be called the one successful American indi- 
vidualist of his day and generation. To a much 
greater degree than even Lincoln did he force is- 
sues, and combat apparently irresistible opposition. 
It was not his policy to cherish hopes and bide his 
time. He slept with his armor on, and was ready 



18 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

to do l>;ilHe without strategy or negotiation. This 
progiam ^YllS absolutely devoid of qualification or 
allowance for circumstances of time or inherited 
conditions. *' Immediate emancipation " was early 
blazoned on his standards j his close followers were 
relatively few, and with some astonishing excep- 
tions, of slight imx)ortance in the world's eyes. Yet 
his cause prospered, though surely not in a way that 
he could have foreseen, else had he, a non-resistant 
by profession, forsaken a path leading in thirty 
years to a strife which threatened the destruction of 
one of the dearest hoi^es of humanitj^ — the existence 
of nearly twoscore sovereignties united under a 
conimun democratic government. He helped to 
precipitate controversies demanding for their settle- 
ment a force and an authoritj^ which he had never 
been willing to recognize. Strangest of all, in his 
desperate policy, he found his strongest allies in his 
bitterest enemies. His theory of secession was 
loftier than that of the South, but it was no less dis- 
obedient to a man -contrived central government. 

Furthermore, though he came to repudiate the 
established forms and concrete practices of religion, 
his career had been an impossibility without the 
fervor and single-heartedness derived from an ab- 
sorption of the Word of God as his simple educa- 
tion and his essentially Protestant and individual 
faith led him to interpret it. His speech and writings 
are full of the far-seeing and fervent zeal of the Old 
Testament proi)hets — he delighted in phrases which 
would have been cant in the mouth of another. If 
Jeremiah and Isaiah were inspired, so without pro^ 



THE ANTECEDENT CONDITION 19 

faneuess may we say that Garrison was inspired ; 
for he, like them, was free from fanaticism, how- 
ever harsh his comminatious of the weak, irresolute, 
and indifferent. And during all his life he was, in 
the main elements of character, completely sane — 
sane as few men have been who possessed genius in 
the same measure as he. Uncomfortable streaks of 
oddity may be found, and must be spoken of when 
necessary, but as a whole he was well-rounded and 
self-restrained— a normal man. 

To rehearse without bitterness, yet fearlessly, the 
story of this life, in its wider aspects, is not the 
easiest of tasks, for Garrison exasperated a nation, 
already stung to a sense of its shortcomings, as no 
man in recent times has had the power or the oppor- 
tunity to do. To-day, as through his whole career, 
there is still open disapproval of or silent dissent 
from his extremes. Descendants of those whom he 
opposed in religion and reform seem to have in- 
herited distrust or dislike. Probably the South is 
fairest of all to him, for he was only a part of the 
inevitable catastrophe which overwhelmed but did 
not crush her. Near home the memories are per- 
sonal and often bitter. Fortunately there are no 
vexing controversies, except over negligible details, 
in the anti-slavery story as a whole. The view 
taken of it depends upon the interpretation of es- 
tablished facts and not upon the disentanglement of 
complicated annals. Much may advisedly be 
omitted and still enough will be left on which to 
base a personal opinion. It will be many years yet 
before the mass of events shall have crystallized 



20 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

into a clear product, with many facets perhaps, yet 
niiil'oim aud coherent to a later historic observation. 
'•Who is this Mr. Garrison? Did not Lay and 
Sanditbrd, Woolnian aud Benezet, Jay and Frank- 
lin, advocate the slavery cause before William 
Lloyd Garrison was heard of?'' Thus, in 1852, 
atiks Richard D. Webb, one of the most intrepid of 
the Irish Abolitionists, in order to answer his own 
(iuestioninj,^ according to the spirit of his times. It 
is now nearly sixty years later, but these questions 
still arise and must be answered, however briefly, if 
the great problem which vexed the country some- 
what in its earliest days, harassed its peace of 
inind mightily for thirty years, and shook its 
foundations for four years, is to be fairly con- 
sidered, and its foremost agitator honestly inter- 
preted. So evident a fact as the existence of 
earlier Abolitionists need not impair or disturb 
the sure reputation of Garrison. To approach, 
now, this matter of j^riority, it may be well to get a 
little further taste of Mr. Webb's opinion, written 
with the stress and feeling characteristic of its 
period. It summarizes the situation toward which 
Garrison had then striven persistently for more 
than twenty years. ''Before he commenced his 
career, the whole nation was sunk in apathy re- 
8i)ecting it [the slavery question]. He was com- 
pelled then, volens volens, to take it up, and now 
they cannot lay it down (although it burns their 
fingers dreadfully) until it lias been settled in one 
way or another. Tt is the question upon which 
the fate of the parties, the election of Presidents, and 



THE ANTECEDENT CONDITION 21 

the existence of the republic depend. It mixes it- 
self up with every public question, and overshadows 
them all. Slavery knows she is engaged in a 
struggle for existence, and the battle is fought with 
all the fury of desperation. This agitation dashes 
sects and jjarties to pieces. It troubles synods, 
conferences, yearly meetings, political conventions. 
It cries to the nation, ' Sleep no more ! ' All whose 
property, policy, pelf, and sectarian tranquillity 
are invaded, lay the blame at Mr. Garrison's door. 
No wonder they are 'grieved,' 'irritated,' and 'in- 
dignant ' with him." 

Let it be understood at the outset that whatever 
is said of the slavery question of three generations 
ago deals with a tale that is told, and not with a dis- 
cussion still vexing intellect and conscience on each 
side of the great imaginary line which once divided 
North and South, but which is well-nigh forgotten, 
even to the name. 

Any discussion as to whether Garrison was the 
nursing father of an anti-slavery movement in this 
country must be largely academic. It is possible 
and even necessary to show that before his day there 
were others who felt as strongly perhaps as he that 
slavery was not only an unwelcome curse, but also 
a burden and a menace. With few exceptions, 
they who abominated the institution took the hu- 
manitarian view, or the religious view, or almost 
any position less uncompromising, less violent in 
its demand than the inviolate, crystal clear idealism 
of William Lloyd Garrison. He certainly more 
than any man gave impetus, and then motion to a 



22 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

decidedly iuert though actually existent mass of 
public opinion. But he did not discover slavery, 
and must take his high X3lace in the honorable suc- 
cession of those who also bore the torch and passed 
it on. **The country is awake to the dangers of 
slavery," wrote Jeremiah Evarts, father of the late 
William M. Evarts, in 1820 ; and three years later 
Eoyal Washburn sent forth the cry from Andover 
Seminary: "Now thousands call the men of Africa 
brethren ; thousands are willing to devote their 
money and their efforts to redeem them from their 
long captivity." 

Even before Wool man and Benezet and Franklin, 
there were others who deplored the sin of slavery, 
its consequent immoralities and its injustices. But 
after all is said, in an age of indentured servitude 
the feeling against a still worse social status could 
hardly be called acute. There was no cloud of 
witnesses to the truth — only those intelligent and 
sensitized few who are not bound in any age to its 
conventions or its self-exculpations. 

Notwithstanding the occasional protest of earlier 
days, it is essential, in any estimate of slavery as it 
once existed, both North and South, to remember 
that domestic service, mostly indoors, was not, even 
though unrequited, the same in kind as drudgery 
in plantations and rice-fields under conditious 
hard at the best, — intolerable, indeed, but for the 
physiological capacity of the plantation negro to en- 
dure life in almost tropical swamps, and for his 
temperamental inertness, from which even cruelty 
could not extort more than a certain average mini- 



THE ANTECEDENT CONDITION 23 

mum of performauce. All this beiug so, it is inter- 
esting to note that while much has been said and 
written of the careless, easy-going, and, at times, 
fatuously happy slave-life in the South, with its 
songs, dances, merrymakings, and religious ecsta- 
sies, there is no such tradition of gaiety among those 
in as real if not as onerous bondage in the North. 
Like master, like man, perhajDS the case was — for 
hilarity was not conspicuous in the northern Amer- 
ican Colonies, and such undoubted good humdr as 
Franklin, for instance, possessed, was seemingly rare. 
If down South the whip was cracked, the laugh 
also went round, especially at Christmas and other 
seasons of merrymaking, while farther North, al- 
though there may have been little or practically no 
physical brutality, there was certainly almoist no 
joyousness — certainly no Christmas ; for a long time 
that festive season had no admitted existence in 
some of the Colonies. 

It must be taken for granted that the customs of 
the world were, in a large measure, the customs of 
the early colonists, who were by no means cut off 
from the influence of European civilization. Tlicre 
was toleration of slavery everywhere. Even the 
greatest English Queen had a hand in the slave- 
trade, although it is believed that she did not wholly 
aj)prove her own conduct. It was possible for Sir 
John Hawkins to have prayers of unusual fervor on 
the upper deck, while the hold was full of stifling 
black humanity -packed in as no cattle would be 
packed to-day — in fact, slaves were cattle to the 
Christian of those times. Even the wonderful Sir 



24 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

Frauds Drake, generally as liumaue as he was 
brave, had his share in the horrible traffic. Only a 
few years after this period, the colonists began to 
come into English America, bringing old-world tra- 
dition and inheritance. Yet in every age there 
have been a few who have had quicker consciences, 
greater discern nieut than the many — the morall}'^ 
superior outstripping, like the intellectually supe- 
rior, their own generation. As early as 16-il the 
General Court of Assistants of the Massachusetts 
Bay enacted in the ''Body of Liberties" that sla- 
very should not exist in the colony, except in the 
case of captives of war. Notwithstanding this 
stand of authority, some slaves were held in the 
Puritan colony. Eoger Williams was the first 
American to inveigh against the enslavement of 
man, in this instance of captive Indians. Some 
years later John Eliot, ''Apostle to the Indians," 
showed humanitarian views, mingled with an out- 
weighing concern for souls removed bj- enslavement 
from " all means of grace." 

"The Selling of Joseph" was the expression of 
the humane and honorable Chief- Justice Samuel 
Sewall. Penitent for his attitude in the witch trials, 
he made occasion, as the eighteenth century was 
opening, to state his belief that the slave-trade and 
the holding of human beings as property were evils, 
and that ^'no one ought to deprive others of 
[liberty], but upon most extreme consideration." 
Chief -justices of Massachusetts, liowever, are not 
often radical in their actions or their tendencies, and 
one must regard his tract as only a little more 



THE ANTECEDEAT COjSDITION 26 

humiiuitariau than the rather low level of objection 
to slavery made at that time on the ground that 
slaves were not an economical device. 

It would be hard to find a clearer or an earlier in- 
stance of the general state of mind, as to the moral 
side of the matter, than is to be seen in the Boston 
News Letter J for June 10, 1706. According to the 
previous year's bill of mortality in that good town, 
there was record of the death of forty- four negroes, 
''which being computed one with another at £30 
per Head, amounts to the Sum of One Thousand 
three hundred and twenty Pounds, of which we would 
make the Eemark ; That the Importing of Negroes 
into this or the Neighboring Provinces is not so 
beneficial either to the Crown or Country, as White 
Servants would be." The writer goes on to show 
that negroes cannot use firearms, that they are gen- 
erally eye-servants and great thieves, and that they 
do not people the country ; for this reason he argues 
that many husbandmen, unable to invest forty or 
fifty pounds for a negro, might by an increased im- 
portation of whites, be furnished with servants for 
"eight, nine or ten pounds per Head.'' "If the 
White Servant die, the Loss exceeds not £10, but if 
a Kegro dies, 'tis a very great loss." Furthermore, 
in case of enemies, a negro cannot be sent against 
them, but "if he [the husbandman] has a White 
Servant, 'twill answer the end," and perhaps "save 
his Son at home." His conclusion is that in one 
year "the Town of Boston has lost £1,320 in 
44 negroes, which is also a loss to the Couutry in 
general ; for a less Loss of a £1,000 the country 



26 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKEISOK 

may have 500 men in five years' time for the 44 
Negroes dead in one year.'' It was, as is plain, a 
purely economic question. Negroes, esj)ecially dead 
negroes, did not pay. One hundred and fifty years 
later it required a long and costly war to demon- 
strate that free labor was more profitable than slave 
labor, but by that time elements other than the 
purely economic fully entered into the settlement. 
A more cold-blooded consideration of any topic 
than this deliberate taking up of the relative com- 
mercial value of two sorts of human flesh it would 
not be easy to find. The judicial Sewall and the 
gentle-souled Woolman surely had stony ground on 
which to make an early planting of humane ideas 
— not the less stony because theirs was an age 
of undoubted formal piety. In the Neivs Letter 
argument we find not a suggestion of an early senti- 
ment foretelling the advent in the fulness of time of 
the fierce evangelism of Garrison. 

Sixty years later Nathaniel Appleton had the 
hardihood to condemn in toto slavery and the im- 
portation of slaves, but like Sewall he made no pro- 
fession of regarding negroes as on terms of equality 
with whites. 

Each generation of Puritan civilization seems to 
have kept alive a belief that human bondage was an 
evil, but no violent proposal was made to do away 
with it. The Society of Friends have a livelier 
record of opposition, though the ground of this op- 
position in each sect was religious and based on the 
teachings of both Testaments. John Hepburn of 
New Jersey as early as 1714 made his protest 



THE ANTECEDENT CONDITION 27 

agaiust the "miserable effects'' produced by the 
slavery of negroes. Even before this, in 1688, the 
Germantown Mennonites, affiliated with the Quakers, 
had issued the "first distinctly anti-slavery docu- 
ment in America,'' ^ and five years later George Keith 
opposed the surrender of fugitive slaves. After 
Hepburn came William Burling, Elihu Coleman, 
Ealph Sandiford and Benjamin Lay — all before 
1750. The two latter men were associates of Frank- 
lin while he was laying the foundation of his sub- 
stantial fortune in the printing office from which 
their efforts were put forth. The assaults of Lay 
and Hepburn on Christian apologists for slavery vie 
with Garrison's choicest ei)ithets against the clergy. 
In contrast with these rather turbulent pamphlet- 
eers appear the names of the Huguenot Anthony 
Benezet and John Woolman, the latter a precursor 
on foot of the indomitable Lundy — both gentle by 
nature and appealing to the good in humanity 
instead of rousing the evil, but both without 
fear, however conciliatory. Woolman, in his call- 
ing of itinerant i^reacher, did not hesitate to re- 
monstrate when he saw the abuses of slaveholding 
in the South. Emancipation, but not of a sudden, 
ill-considered kind, seems to have been the ob- 
jective point of the Quakers as a whole, in the ex- 
pression of their anti -slavery principles. "Before 
the close of the Kevolutionary War, slavery had been 
practically abandoned by tlie Quakers of the North- 
ern and Middle states." ^ By 1788 substantially 

^ Anti-Slavery in America, 1619-1808, Mary S. Locke, p. 24. 
' Ibid., p. 36. 



28 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

all slaves owned by tliein in Maryland and Virginia 
had been emancipated. The example of the Virginia 
Friends, Warner Mifflin and his wife, who by 1775 
had manumitted all their human chattels, was a 
bright one in the annals of this sect which stands 
first in anti-slavery and emancipation efforts. 
Mifflin unceasingly talked, wrote and memorialized 
against slavery ; he must have been in his day as 
great a nuisance to the morally inert as Garrison 
later proved himself. It cannot be said of the 
Quakers that self-interest would fairly explain their 
willingness to let go their hold on an uneconomical 
system, as slavery was proving itself to be even in 
colonial days, for their natural prudence and 
sagacity might easily have made the system profit- 
able. Had appeals like Garrison's been addressed 
to such rational, peace-loving slaveholders as these, 
he might have accomplished his purpose in the way 
he insisted upon, without unwittingly provoking a 
vast civil strife. The efforts of other religious 
bodies seem slight in comparison, although sporadic 
attempts, especially among the Baptists and Method- 
ists, were honestly made. 

Thus far, to go back a little, all that pointed 
toward any solution of the grave problem resulted, 
as we have seen, mostly from religious motives and 
was said or done by occasional individuals more 
enlightened than the times in which they lived ; 
practically nothing had been accomplished by 
united or organized bodies. The eighteenth cen- 
tury, however, saw the rise of another impulse 
which affected not only individuals but large bodies 




THE AXTECEDEKT CONDITION 29 

of meu, and surged aud eddied around the strong 
bulwarks of ecclesiastic ism. without especially mod- 
if}' iug it. The dogma of the natural rights of man 
aud its corollary, the doctrine of equality, made many 
changes ; they affected if they did not produce the 
American Revolution and without them there had 
been no French uprising or Eeign of Terror. They 
Avere born, as such great mov^emeuts must be born, 
of antecedent wrongs and injustices. It was im- 
possible that so general a sentiment should not 
change men's feelings toward human slavery. 
Some of those who began to talk about the beauties 
of liberty discovered that it might also be beautiful 
for a black slave. ''Can any logical inference,'' 
asks James Otis, ''be drawn from a Hat nose, along 
or a short face?" John Adams, Samuel Webster, 
and James Swan of Massachusetts, and the Rev. 
Samuel Hopkins of Rhode Island, were outspoken 
in the matter, while Dr. Benjamin Rush in Pennsyl- 
vania, and that excellent patriot, Henry Laurens of 
South Carolina, were no less eager to see ended the 
strange inconsistency of a country struggling for 
freedom and independence, yet maintaining under 
custom and law a portion of its inhabitants en- 
slaved. 

Jefferson, who in his younger days trembled for 
his country in its support of slavery when he re- 
flected that God is just, suffered in his later years 
from a drying up of the juices of moral enthusiasm ; 
but, as the enthusiast who penned the great mani- 
festo of freedom, he was consistent in his abhorrence, 
theoretical as it may have been, of the tyranny of 



30 AVILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

property in man. On the other hand, the tolerant 
and freethinkiug Franklin, unlike his friend White- 
field, gained more light as he grew older. Never an 
idealist, he was immensely humane in practice. 
When young, though intimate with Sandiford and 
Lay, he advertised negro-sales in his Pennsylvania 
Gazette ; later he saw and wrote ui)on the economic 
ineffectiveness of slavery ; and before he died he 
rose to a higher philanthropic plane on the subject. 
He was incapable, however, of the great enthusiasm 
of a Garrison, because he was more limited in his 
moral vision ; yet he undoubtedly saw farther in 
some directions than was possible for the later 
agitator. Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush were 
leaders of the sentiment against slavery in Pennsyl- 
vania, and the former was made the first president 
of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society when it was 
reorganized under a very long and comprehensive 
title. John Dickinson, no lover of Benjamin 
Franklin, was as idealistically uncompromising in 
his hatred both of slavery and the inconsistency of 
maintaining it, as any Garrisonian. 

To think of Benjamin Franklin in connection 
with anti- slavery is to recall his friend Ezra Stiles, 
President of Yale College, who was president of the 
Connecticut Abolition Society, and who, in company 
with Dr. Hopkins, also had a leaning toward African 
colonization before colonization began to be re- 
garded with suspicion. In New Haven the second 
Jonathan Edwards was strongly against the evil, and 
in 1791 preached a sermon on the injustice and im- 
policy of the slave-trade and slavery, in which he 



THE ANTECEDENT CONDITION 31 

urged individual manumission. The first and 
greater Edwards, however, like the renowned 
George Whitefield, did believe in negro slavery.^ 

Four Southerners of this period deserve especial 
mention : George Wythe and St. George Tucker, the 
former of whom had earlier inclined toward 
abolition and afterward freed his slaves, while the 
latter favored gradual emancipation ; the Eev. 
David Rice of Kentucky, and the Rev. James 
Gilliland of South Carolina, both firm opponents of 
slavery, the evils of which they had an opportunity 
of observing at close range. Another clergyman, 
Jedediah Morse of Connecticut, the geographer, 
used his widely studied books to inculcate, as chance 
offered, his views on the subject. William Rawle 
and Miers Fisher in Pennsylvania, Elias Boudiuot 
and Joseph Bloomfield in New Jersey, John Jay 
and Gouverueur Morris in New York, Judge 
Zephaniah Swift, Noah Webster, and Theodore 
Dwight in Connecticut, all are to be placed in the 
post-revolutionary ranks of anti-slavery, though 
the degree of their several enthusiasms differed. 

While some were seeking to show that the primi- 
tive African was a simple and delightful creature, 
full of elemental excellencies of the Inkle and 
Yarico sort, as told by Steele in the Spectator^ others 
seem to have had some dim foreshadowing of the 
biological argument of comparative racial inferior- 
ity. Benezet served well his cause by showing that 
the black man under more favoring conditions was 
capable of advance. 

1 Rhodes, Vol. I, p. 5. 



32 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISOK 

To a considerable and important extent, not only 
men bnt measures before, during and after the 
Revolution were against the per^^etuation of this 
vexatious contradiction to the animating principles 
of those days ; we are, however, concerned more 
with opinions than with i)olitical or legislative 
acts, and must be content with remembering that 
the reaction against slavery in the colonies and the 
new nation did not end in mere edifying phraseology 
and philanthropic sentiment. Manj^ have been the 
attemj^ts to prove that there was an earnest move- 
ment in the South, and particularly in Virginia, to 
mitigate the most trying features of the peculiar 
institution, and even to w^ork toward some plan of 
gradual — very gradual — emancipation. Consider- 
able testimony has been advanced to support such a 
theory, but there is also abundant evidence that 
even before the development of the anti-slavery 
sentiment reached any acute stage, resentment and 
certainly anxiety were shown at interference on the 
part of outsiders. It was felt in the early days of 
the agitation as it was felt later, and not without 
reason, that whether slavery was a burden or not — 
and there is frequent admission that it was a burden 
— it must be borne or relieved by that part of the 
country which had decided, all things considered, 
to continue the responsibility of assuming and 
maintaining it. 

In 1785, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Coke, a graduate 
of Oxford University, and ordained superintendent 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church by John Wesley, 
one of the most fervid haters of slavery, was in 



THE ANTECEDENT CONDITION 33 

Virginia with Superintendent (later Bisliop) Asbury, 
proclaiming the opposition of his church to the evil 
and urging petitions for its actual abolition. In 
one place where he was i)reaching in a barn, his 
efforts "provoked many of the unawakened to re- 
tire out of the barn and conspire to flog me as soon 
as I came out. A high -headed lady also went out 
and told the rioters that she would give fifty 
pounds, if they would give that little Doctor one 
hundred lashes.'' The " little Doctor " suffered no 
harm, but feeling ran strong against him until he 
learned that, in raising this subject, it was prudent 
first to address "the negroes in a very pathetic 
manner on the duty of servants to masters." Later 
in the year, a petition for a general emancipation, 
which Washington, after expressing an agreement 
with the sentiment of Coke and Asbury, declined 
to sign, was unanimously rejected, but not, accord- 
ing to Madison, without " an avowed patronage of 
its principles by sundry respectable members.'^* 
This incident is cited mainly to show that the re- 
sentment of earlier and later days, even in Virginia, 
against interference from without may have been 
the same in kind. It is not likely that the sym- 
pathy of the " sundry respectable members " excited 
any antipathy. It does not appear, moreover, that 
in the Southern states there was pronounced objec- 
tion to the manumission of certain slaves who had 
enlisted and served in the Eevolutionary War. 
The sensitiveness of the South before Garrison's 

1 Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Transactions, 1899, 1900, 
pp. 370-380. 



34 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

day must not be lost sight of. ^ That it was not raw 
was because relatively little happened to make it 
so. The possibility of irritation was ever present. 
As early as 1825 W. B. Seabrook of Charles- 
ton, S. C, took alarm regarding the anti-slavery 
sentiments exi)ressed in the North, during the ante- 
Garrison period, at a time when, according to 
Oliver Johnson, one of Garrison's biographers, and 
for a time editor of the Liberator^ ^' the anti-slavery 
sentiment of the country had become too feeble to 
utter even a whisper," and when 'Hhe blackness 
of the darkness of ignorance and indifference 
. . . then brooded over what we call the moral 
and religious element of the American people." 
Mr. Seabrook did not discover such stagnation in 
the decade before the young Newburyport printer 
found himself on the road to Damascus, for labor- 
ing under strong feeling, he writes '' against the 
constitutional privileges of the slaveholders, to 
use the horrible and savage language of the Edin- 
burgh Review, it would seem as if they [the news- 
papers and books of the North] had ' declared inter- 
minable war — war for themselves and for their 
children and for their grandchildren — war without 
peace — war without truce.' " The foresight of this 
impassioned Southern pamphleteer seems to have 
been surer than the historical hindsight of the zealous 
friends of the great Abolitionist, anxious to prove too 
much, lest they defend their idol not loyally enough. 
Now and then was uttered some opinion, well 

^ 77ie Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery in America, Alice Dana 
Adams, p. 110. 



THE ANTECEDENT CONDITION 36 

calculated to rouse the always lurkiug fear that 
some day the freer states would no longer remain 
passive iu this matter. When George Thatcher of 
Massachusetts said, in 1798, in the debate over the 
prohibition of slavery in the Mississippi Territory 
that "a property in slaves is founded in wrong, 
and never can be right," and that '' he never could 
be brought to believe that an individual can have 
a right in anything which goes to the destruction 
of our government ; viz.j that he can have right in 
a wrong" — he struck at the root of the matter as 
deeply as Garrison himself. He did not, however, 
advocate manumission of these slaves, or cry aloud 
for immediate abolition without indemnity. That 
proposal, in all its boldness and simplicity, really 
seems at this time not to have moved the general 
heart of man. On the contrary, men were open to 
the seductive argument from the South, that the 
condition of the slaves would be ameliorated and 
gradual emancipation become possible if the area 
of their bondage were enlarged — on the principle, 
perhaps, that treacle and poison would do less harm 
spread thin on a large slice of bread than thick on 
a small one. However unpersuaded by such an 
argument one might be to-day, at that time it had 
its effect. The Mississippi Territory was not made 
free ; freedom and slavery were divided by the 
Ohio ; and soon came the Missouri Compromise 
which still further marked the impressive attempts 
of slavery to establish itself politically so that it 
could not eventually be dislodged by popular op- 
position. 



3G WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

With the wisdom that shrewdly comes in this 
case, long after the eveut, it is clear that the spirit 
of mutual adjustment must have shown the early 
sympathizers with anti-slavery that the only hope 
of securing the most desirable thing — the doing 
away with slavery — lay in effecting something else 
almost as important — the prohibition of the slave- 
trade. The more Southern j)ortion of the country 
could still be approached in this matter, without 
exciting great antagonism. 

The abolition of the slave-trade and the War 
of 1812, almost immediately following, weakened the 
general anti-slavery sentiment. There being as 
yet little of a practical nature and certainly less of 
anything subversive or revolutionary in the various 
suggestions for alleviating conditions in the house 
of bondage, it was natural and inevitable that so 
practical a thing as war should prove a distraction. 
It undoubtedly did distract attention from the moral 
question of slavery as well as from the working of 
the prohibition of the slave-trade in 1807. On the 
whole, it is remarkable that only about fifteen years 
after the close of the war there was sufficient read- 
justment in the public mind once more to entertain 
so grave a problem. Had it not been for the general 
awakening that began in the early thirties and for 
the pronouncement of the South against the work- 
ings of the Tariff of Abominations ending with a 
threat of secession, it is conceivable that even the 
energy of a Garrison — for Lundy had failed to make 
a profound or a general impression — would not 
have aroused large attention. After the Civil War 



THE ANTECEDENT CONDITION 37 

the uatiou was not ripe to entertain any serious 
question until almost twenty years had elapsed. Up 
to the first nomination of Cleveland even so prac- 
tical a matter as the reform of the civil service was 
lightly or scoffiugly regarded except by a relatively 
few, and they were often objects of derision. It is 
not unreasonable that a people, always cautious 
about grasping a fresh conception of duty or inter- 
est, should lie fallow as regards moral perplexities 
after so devastating an event as war. 

The compromises of the Constitution by no means 
extinguished the spirit of liberty best formulated in 
the Great Declaration, and they only dulled for a 
time the other and stronger spirit of justice and 
sense of duty to all mankind. After the Eevolu- 
tion, and until the formal abolition of the slave- 
trade in 1807, there was what has been called an 
era of gradual abolition. Mainly by emancipative 
acts the various Northern states rid themselves of 
the burden and reproach of slaveholdiug, though 
in some states the process of liberation dragged 
on so gradually that the nineteenth century was 
well advanced before it could be said there were no 
slaves north of the dividing line. In Pennsylvania, 
for instance, notwithstanding the preponderatiug 
influence of the Society of Friends, ever one of the 
strongholds of anti- slavery sentiment, the United 
States census as late as 1840 reports that there were 
still forty slaves. 

Yet the prohibition of the slave-trade did solidify 
what there was of anti-slavery sentiment, now pos- 
sessing a sort of recognition by statute. If the slave- 



38 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

trade were brought to an eud by legislation, slavery 
itself in time might receive similar consideration. 
Meanwhile, patience and a constant declaration that 
slavery was in itself an evil seem to have been the 
watchword ; an actual program or a definite plan 
to oppose the evil itself did not really exist until 
GaiTison appeared. 

The war well over, dormant sensibilities again 
revived. Travelers and immigrants, it has been 
pointed out by Miss Locke in her most informing 
monograph, already cited, now began to make ob- 
servations of the institution as they actually saw 
it in passing, and their observations were unfavor- 
able. Besides the continuing eiforts, mild as they 
were, of the various organizations, through conven- 
tions and reports, the grave matter of the possible 
invasion of free territory by slavery was of increas- 
ing imi^ortance. Indiana was admitted as a state 
in 1816, and Illinois in 1818, with constitutional 
prohibitions of slavery. As counterweight on the 
side of slavery, Mississippi came into the Union in 
1817 and Alabama in 18 L9. Then followed the ad- 
mission in 1820 of Missouri, the second state (Lou- 
isiana being the first in 1812) to be formed out of 
the Louisiana Purchase. The equipoise of power re- 
quired that if Maine were to be separated from 
Massachusetts to form another free state, Missouri 
must come into the Union committed to slavery. 
Tliere having been no marked controversy over Lou- 
isiana, it was Missouri that occasioned the discussion 
as to what was to be done about freedom and sla- 
very west of the Mississippi, for the line of freedom 



THE ANTECEDENT CONDITION 39 

ran to the division north of the Ohio and east of the 
Mississippi. The ' ' Missouri Compromise Line ' ' 
was the parallel of latitude 36° 30' j Missouri came 
in as a slave state and slavery was shut out of all 
territory north of the line running west to what were 
then the Spanish Possessions. 

Acting as a setback to the growing activities 
stimulated by the political exigencies of the day, 
the American Colonization Society was started in 
1816, and enlisted the sympathies of a large number 
of the respectable and socially important class, both 
North and South. Occasional petitions to abolish 
slavery in the District of Columbia were made dur- 
ing the last decade preceding Garrison. As early 
as 1805 a resolution was presented and rejected in 
Congress, pointing toward ultimate emancipation 
in the District ; a year earlier, John Parrish held 
that the government had authority in the District 
*^ to iDrevent some of those evils this degraded part 
of our fellow men are groaning under. ' ' ^ These were 
precedents of the strenuous efforts of the new abo- 
litionism to eradicate the evil in the one place 
wherein the government of the United States had 
power to act if it so chose, without impairing the 
constitutional rights and privileges of any state. 

Of the anti-slavery or abolition societies, little 
more needs to be said. There is not sufficient reason 
to doubt their sincerity in pursuing their professed 
object ; and it may safely be assumed that they 
wished to mitigate and finally to do away with the 
horrors of slavery and even slavery itself. Their 
1 Locke, p. 163. 



40 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

general purposes were practically the same, but it is 
probable that with many their specific activity was 
devoted to alleviating the lot of the slave, and to 
caring for free blacks, educationally and in other 
ways. One hundred and eighteen of these societies 
have been enumerated as in existence between 1808 
and 1831. The most important as well as the first of 
them was the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting 
the Abolition of Slavery. Organized in 1775 and 
composed largely of Quakers, it declined in activity 
during the Revolution, and was rehabilitated in 1787, 
with Franklin as the first president. Other societies 
mainly followed its plan of organization and work. 
It was natural that the American Convention for 
Promoting the Abolition of Slavery should meet, 
with but few gaps, each year from 1794 to 1828, in 
Philadelphia, where what one may call the parent 
society of Garrisonian abolition afterward had its 
birth. Ten years later the American Convention 
was extinct. 

It is important to recognize that these earlier or- 
ganizations proposed nothing insurrectionary, and 
that their address was made to the sensibilities of 
all Americans in behalf of what was believed to be a 
great misfortune rather than a political crime. Yet 
it is true, from the unbiased standpoint of imper- 
sonal history, that they ploughed and harrowed 
ground which otherwise might have been infertile 
indeed, when Garrison ax>peared, like some modern 
Cadmus, to sow seed that raised a crop of a million 
armed men. 

It would be easily possible to enlarge on these 



THE ANTECEDENT CONDITION 41 

and other efforts to rouse Americans to au interest 
iu this moat vital of problems, but there is no call 
to do so here. It is enough to have indicated, how- 
ever rapidly, that ^Hhe history of anti-slavery has 
no gaps." * 

In the South not only did individuals appear to 
be ill earnest, but collectively there was some move- 
ment by way of organization, if not of specific or 
definite action. In six states, half of them in the 
later seceding South, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, 
North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky, over one 
hundred abolition societies had an existence, though 
there is ground for believing that many and perhaps 
most of them were inactive. 

A review of the earlier history of the anti-slavery 
movement is not quite accurate so long as it recog- 
nizes only two divisions of the country, the North 
and the South, without separate reference to the 
West. The geographical situation of Ohio, and still 
more of Indiana and Illinois, the first three states 
cut out of the Northwest Territory, connected them 
in the years before the westward extension of the 
railroads more closely with the South than with the 
North, and immigration into them, especially in their 
earlier years, was in great measure from the South. 
The Southerners brought with them widely diver- 
gent views of slavery ; but it is worthy of remark 
that while Southern efforts to open the Northwest to 
slavery were vigorous, no small proportion of the 
settlers from the South came expressly to be rid of 
the evil, some even bringing their slaves to emanci- 

* Locke, p. 8 ; Adams, p. 252. 



42 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKRISON 

pate tliem in a land of freedom. The Kentucky 
settlers repulsed at Cliillicothe by Indians ; the 
Virginian, Governor Coles, who saved the soil of 
Illinois to freedom ; and the Carolina Quakers in 
Indiana are merely conspicuous examples of a 
stream of Southern immigrants carrying to the 
]S[orthwest a conscientious horror of slavery. As for 
the Northerners, no one can read of the early aboli- 
tion societies in Ohio,^ or follow the discussions in 
old Indiana '^ papers, or become acquainted with the 
activity of the itinerant John W. Peck in stiiriug 
up the Illinois ' preachers, without being well as- 
sured that many of those who came into the North- 
west from Northern states reprobated slavery as a 
moral evil. It is true that but a small proportion 
of the population, whether of Northern or Southern 
origin, were moved by feelings deeper than those of 
prejudice and self-interest, yet something more vital 
than the instinct of political self-preservation was 
already at work in these communities. The sacri- 
fices of some of the anti -slavery men of the Old 
Northwest and the energy of others are sufficient to 
prove that neither the whole North nor even the 
whole South had been '^slumbering in the lap of 
moral death." 

We have come, by forced marches, close upon the 
time when a new energy and a fresh inspiration were 
to enter a field which had been already occupied 

^ Adams, pp. 148-149. 

^Indiana, a Redemption From Slavery, J. P. Dnnn, Jr., pp. 
417-436, 
3 Negro Servitude in Illinois^ N. I). Harris, p. 43. 



THE ANTECEDENT CONDITION 43 

v/ortbily for many years. The Northwest Ordinance, 
the abolition of the slave-trade, and the Free-Soil 
ideas already generated in Illinois and Indiana, 
were great achievements. But something more 
definite still was needed toward the fulfilment of a 
hope avowed by many earnest souls and many 
widely distributed organizations — and this some- 
thing was a concrete national plan to do away with 
the incubus of human bondage. The story of the 
pre Garrisonian efforts at best is uninspiring, with 
occasionally some luminous incident. It is almost 
wholly wanting in thatspontaneity and fervor which 
sometimes change mere annals into dramatic move- 
ment. What had long been the perfunctory dis- 
charge of moral obligations, as men saw their duty 
in the matter, was now to become a strenuous, unre- 
mitting challenge to fight, not with the weapons of 
w^ar but of conscience ; the battle was to be no 
less grim, because it was for many years to be 
bloodless. 

When the young printer sent forth his arrogant 
demand for immediate abolition and for no union 
with slaveholders, he appealed to the emotions and 
the conscience of a country in which, by entirely 
pacificatory measures, slaveholdiug had disappeared 
in one and the stronger half, and from which by 
legislative enactment the slave-trade had been for- 
ever abolished. The line dividing freedom and 
slavery had been drawn — by compromise to be 
sure, but how else could it have been drawn? 
Books, pamphlets, the preacher and the orator at 
their desks, even the occasional politician on his 



44 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

stump, memorials and petitions, newsi>apers, and 
more than all this, the slow-growing ferment of dis- 
satisfaction in a democracy beginning to come to 
self- consciousness after being born in one war, and 
cutting its teeth in a second — these various factors 
were in a fashion ready to hand when Garrison dis- 
covered, after a few years of seeming indifference to 
the whole matter, that the bondage of one human 
being by another was an intolerable evil. His 
achievements were no less great, his genius for mov- 
ing the hearts and consciences of men was no less 
wonderful, because, happily, he fitted well into an 
environment which was not at all feeble because it 
haijpened to need so strong a character at the precise 
time when he rather suddenly appeared. When 
there is discussion as to preponderant influences in 
a cause, there is no final agreement possible, but 
in reflecting upon the activities of the ante- Garrison 
period, it is comprehensible why Henry Ward 
Beecher in answer to the question, " Who abolished 
slavery?" should have answered, " Eev. John Ean- 
kin and his seven sons." This was the Eankin, the 
first edition of whose Letters on American Slavery 
were published at Eipley, O., in 1826, when the 
author was pastor of the Presbyterian church. 
Garrison, finding that these letters had ''Scriptuial 
pungency," republished them in the Liberator. 
Beecher' s saying rather indirectly recalls the irony 
of Wendell Phillips's remark in Mrs. Chapman's 
abolition annual, the well-printed and well-edited 
Liberty Bell : *' It may yet come to pass that it will 
be given out as a subject for themes at Harvard, 



THE ANTECEDENT CONDITION 45 

* Which did the most, Garrison or Calhoun, for the 
downfall of American slavery f ' " 

After making the fullest recognition, therefore, 
of all forerunners, it is due to Garrison's memory 
to recall the assertion of one who knew him and 
who observed intelligently. It is safe to agree 
with Mr. Webb's statement of threescore years 
ago : ^ ' People might talk till doomsday of opposing 
slavery, or of getting rid of it by some process of 
infinitesimal slowness ; they might propose i^lans 
for preparing the slave for freedom, and of leaving 
off robbery and licentiousness by degrees. Nobody 
was disturbed by such i^ropositions. But the call 
to cease at once from these gigantic crimes shook 
the land like an earthquake, and forced the preacher 
of this Gospel of Liberty into a position of promi- 
nence which he has maintained to the present hour." 



CHAPTEE II 

THE TENTATIVE YEARS 

BoKN on December 10, 1805, William Lloyd Garri- 
son had New England, Irish, and, probably though 
not certainly. Provincial blood in his veins. From 
the New England point of view, his New Brunswick 
ichor was the least desirable of the three strains, 
for it has never been felt by the inhabitants of that 
part of our country that the Maritime Provinces 
have contributed their just proportion to the good 
results ensuing to the native American stock from 
vigorous immigration. However unreasonable this 
Yankee prejudice against the ''Blue Noses," such 
prejudice doubtless exists; but it is within the 
truth to say that Garrison did not have the traits 
thought to be typical of the inhabitants of the laud 
of his immediate i)aternal ancestry. His grand- 
father on his father's side, Joseph Garrison, may 
have been an American Loyalist, or may have been 
and probably was an Englishman found by emi- 
grants from Essex County, Massachusetts, who 
settled in the Maugerville Grant, New Brunswick, 
and who included his name among the grantees. 
He married in 1764 Mary, the third daughter of 
Daniel Palmer of Kowley, another of the grantees. 
The fifth of their nine children, born in 1773, was 
Abijahj father of William Lloyd Garrison. 



THE TENTATIVE YEARS 47 

Though severed from the American Colonies, and 
closer to the effective control of the British govern- 
ment, the Essex County emigrants were at this time 
not deaf to the growing clamors for resistance in 
some form to the mother country. One proof of the 
direct English origin of Joseph Garrison is that he 
was not affected by the rebellious sentiments of his 
associates, and did not sign, as did his father-in- 
law, a spirited and audacious address entitled 
''Action of the People on the St. John River,'' an 
omission for which he found himself sent to Coventry 
for a time by his fellow settlers. Compelled by the 
troops of a visiting British vessel to take the oath 
of allegiance, these settlers, in spite of their bold 
declaration, quieted down from necessity. Joseph 
Garrison died in 1783, leaving no wealth, but 
transmitting to his posterity an aptitude for music 
and a tendency to lameness in the male line. 
Abijah Garrison was a sailor and rose to the posi- 
tion of captain. His sou, writing from hearsay, 
affirms that he had a sound knowledge of naviga- 
tion, was ''genial and social in his manners, kind 
and affectionate in his disposition." He married 
Frances Maria (called Fanny), daughter of Andrew 
Lloyd, of Kinsale, Munster, Ireland. Her mother 
was also born in Ireland, of an English father and 
an Irish mother. Fanny was born in Deer Island, 
Xew Brunswick, in 1776, and here Abijah romantic- 
ally found her, hotly wooed, and quickly won her. 
The date of the marriage is not known, but it was 
probably just before the opening of the nineteenth 
century, and at Jemseg, Abijah's birthplace. 



\ 



48 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON 

Three children were born to this couple before they 
left St. John, where they lived during the first 
years of their wedded life. They then went to 
Granville, Nova Scotia, and later, moved perhaps 
by sentiment, took voyage for the home of Abijah's 
maternal ancestry, arriving in Newburyport early 
in 1805. 

Late that year, on December 10th, was born their 
fourth child, William Lloyd, by good fortune as 
well as by unmistakable characteristics, a Is'ew Eng- 
lander, but not typically a Massachusetts Puritan. 
He was too nobly lacking in prudence for that. 
The house in which he was born still exists, though 
the interior is much changed. On one side of it 
stands the parsonage where the great George White- 
field used to lodge during his visits and where he 
died ; on the other side is the church where White- 
field preached, and beneath which his dust now lies. 
Nearly opposite was the writing-school where the 
young Garrison got the beginnings of a far from 
elaborate education. Of the noble character of his 
mother, the son gave ample testimony by word and 
by the following of her precepts. She had an un- 
common courage which was in his case certainly 
transmitted. Poverty dismayed her as little as it 
did her illustrious son. And she had withal a com- 
placent, buoyant disposition by means of which she 
managed to ride over the waves of adversity without 
shipping too many seas. This amiable trait was 
also passed on to the next generation, to the incal- 
culable benefit of the inheritor. Religious tolerance, 
never failing except in the presence of intolerance, 



THE TENTATIVE YEAES 49 

characterized both mother and sou. The influence 
of so admirable a parent must not be lost sight of in 
a general estimate of a character like Garrison's. 
He certainly paid full tribute. Besides these traits 
of character was the gift of a fine personal appear- 
ance — not the greatest which the gods bestow, but 
helpful and a cause for gratitude. 

If birthplaces were of our own choosing, a New 
Euglander on the threshold of life a hundred years 
ago might have hesitated long over Portsmouth, 
Newbury port, and Salem. All were beautiful and 
important seaport towns, and each had a flavor 
quite its own. In each of them ancient dignity and 
distinction are still well maintained, though com- 
mercial changes, steam navigation, and a connect- 
ing railroad which has reduced their rivalries to a 
level of moderate enterprise, have long since 
robbed them of preeminence. Each was a place 
where a growing boy might justly feel that his 
chance in life would depend largely on character 
and ability, although a local aristocracy, whose 
sentiments were admirably expressed in the ample 
and j)ersuasive architecture of those days, made 
itself felt. It was not, however, oppressive, and 
those who, like Garrison, were modestly placed, 
enjoyed the sensibly adjusted democratic conditions 
which survived the Eevolution for nearly fifty 
years. 

Before young William Lloyd was three years old 
— about the middle of the summer of 1808 — Abijah 
Garrison left his wife and his little family, just dimin- 
ished by the death of a daughter, and enriched by 



60 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

the birth of another, and never set foot again in New- 
buryport. The Garrisons, in the monumental bi- 
ography of their father, have told this humiliating 
story of the desertion of his home by their grand- 
father with their habitual passion for truthfulness, 
and there need be no lingering over the sorrowful 
plight and mortification of a woman in her early 
thirties left with three young children. However, 
it is necessary to the structure of this narrative of 
Garrison's life to know that intemperance, at least 
a too free use of drink, may have been at the bottom 
of Abijah Garrison's cowardly sin. His wife was 
vigorous in her disapproval of her husband's way- 
ward aiDpetite, but it would not be in accord with 
what is known of her to infer that she nagged him 
to the point of deserting her. No modern theory of 
dual personality or the mania errabmida will ex- 
plain his flitting, for he was heard of as living and 
conscious of his own identity as late as 1814, but 
not later. His indulgence in drink was the evidence 
of a more essential weakness, and this led him to 
the final step which one hesitates to call baseness, 
for it is too vague and unsatisfactory a word. One 
son followed his father's perverse and self-indul- 
gent ways ; the other grew up to an immaculate 
manhood, as far as moral qualities are concerned, 
with an abhorrence of all personal, physical vices, 
and in him, as must be in fairness admitted, there was 
but little of the paternal inheritance. Genius does 
not most readily find a nidus in a sound and normal 
make-up, but seems to settle with avidity into those 
personalities where are lurking eccentric and dan- 



THE TENTATIVE YEARS 61 

gerous elements. Remembering this, the greater 
seems Garrison's debt to his mother, and the greater 
the marvel of his escape, through her normality, 
from his father's shortcomings. 

When this deadening blow to her pride and her 
hitherto robust health fell upon Mrs. Garrison, liv- 
ing as she did under the protecting kindness of 
Captain Farnham and his wife in the plain box 
house on School Street, there was fortunately no im- 
mediate danger of finding herself roofless. She 
turned to that for which her womanly and maternal 
instincts well adapted her— the occupation of nurs- 
ing. In New England at that time the calling fol- 
lowed by the mother of Socrates was a respected 
one. A few years later, Mrs. Garrison went to 
Lynn, still as a nurse, but leaving her younger son 
in care of the Bartletts, a worthy Baptist family. 
By this time he had completed his primary train- 
ing, in which he showed himself no marvelous 
scholar, except in handwriting ; and had attended 
the grammar school for about three months, when 
Deacon Bartlett's necessities obliged him to use the 
lad's services to eke out a subsistence for the family. 
Thus taught by contact with humble poverty, 
young Lloyd, for so his mother called him, learned 
the lessons of self-sacrifice and of obligation to 
others ; but he was not the less a hearty and pleas- 
ure-loving boy, fond of all the sports, and taking 
his part in the rough and tumble, with no misgiv- 
ings as yet in regard to ''non-resistance." It was 
his good fortune thus early to have mastery in sev- 
eral achievements, among them long-distance swim- 



52 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

miiig. From both parents came to him a love for 
music, which, early encouraged and cultivated, Avas 
a source of enjoyment to him and to others all his 
life. His boyhood, then, in spite of serious priva- 
tions, wiis Siine, natural, and wholesome. At the 
age of nine this child, already familiar with life as 
a duty and not as a mtrry-go-round, was appren- 
ticed to a shoe manufacturer in a small way in 
Lynn, where he had gone to be with his mother, 
now beginning to need more assistance. Presently 
the mother and her two boys joined a party of la- 
borers who followed another Lynn manufacturer to 
Baltimore, to try the making of shoes in that place. 
The venture was unprofitable, and all hands re- 
turned to Lynn with Mr. ^N^ewhall, the projector of 
the enterprise, with the exception of Mrs. Garrison, 
who again took up her calling with success. Before 
long, however, her sou James ran away to sea, and 
the steadier boy went back to the Bartletts to get a 
little more schooling and to earn what he could of 
a living. The escapades of Garrison are few indeed, 
yet it may be recalled that at about this time, aj)- 
prenticed to a Haveihill cabinet-maker, Moses 
Short by name, the boy became homesick for New- 
bury port, and tried to get there by "hooking" 
rides on the stage-coach. He was overtaken by his 
master, who released him formally when hh under- 
stood his apprentice's natural longings. 

At last, in the fall of 1818, began the definite oc- 
cupation of his life, when he was apprenticed as a 
printer's boy to Ephraim W. Allen, editor of a 
semi-weekly paper, the Newburyport Herald. It 



THE TENTATIVE YEARS 53 

was in the office of the Herald that sixty years 
later he weut to the case and handled type for the 
last time. His marvelous persistence began to as- 
sert itself and he soon became an expert compositor. 
Away from him, his mother pined to have her son 
with her in Baltimore, but with her strong good sense 
would not call him to her, though she suffered much 
from physical aihueuts. It is interesting to note 
that she acknowledged her obligations, during ill- 
ness, to Heuny, a colored woman ''that is so kind 
no one can tell how kind she is, and although a 
slave to man, yet a free-born soul, by the grace of 
God." Thus indirect though sacred was the first 
recorded contact of Garrison with the race to which 
he was to consecrate his life. 

Still in his teens, the young fellow, having mas- 
tered the various details of his craft, was made fore- 
man of the Herald office. He was indebted for his 
success not only to his diligence and skill— often do- 
ing his thousand " ems" an hour for several hours 
at a stretch, but to his associates. Chief among 
them was Tobias H. Miller, later a Portsmouth city 
missionary, whose even, benignant temper and en- 
couraging adages and " sententice " made a helpful 
impression on his fellow craftsman. 

It is not known whether Garrison ever read the 
''Autobiography" of Benjamin Franklin; but it 
would have been natural for him to profit by such 
an example. In any event there are interesting re- 
semblances in their boyhoods. Neither found his 
first employment much to his liking, but both, when 
entered in the printer's trade, through good habits, 



54 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

perseverance, and unusual skill and aptitude, pro- 
gressed with marvelous rapidity. Both early felt the 
value of good reading, but Garrison- s range seems not 
to have been as broad as Franklin's, although, com- 
ing just a hundred years later, he had a wider choice. 
The didactive appealed to both. What Cotton 
Mather's ''Essays to Do Good " were to the earlier, 
such writings as Mrs. Heinans's poetry were to the 
later, American. And curiously each tried his 
'prentice hand in anonymous contributions to the 
newspaper i)ublished in the office where he was em- 
ployed, and each was successful. The *'Do Good'' 
letters find their counterpart in the wise cogitations 
of ''An Old Bachelor." The analogy might be 
carried farther, and it might be shown how both these 
eminent youths were inspired by a passion for self- 
improvement, which developed on widely differing 
paths into a strong desire to benefit mankind. Con- 
sidering that one was the most eminently practical 
of all Americans, and that the other was in the front 
rank of our idealists, the recognition of such resem- 
blances is not uni)rofitable. 

Long before he was twenty Garrison had become 
interested in i)olitical controversies, mainly through 
a reading of Fisher Ames's defenses of Federalism ; 
but the fascination of party contest still kept him, 
as it kept others, blind to the moral inconsistencies 
involved in our national existence. William Lloyd 
Garrison was then as insensible to the question of 
slavery as was that cold, astute, political craftsman, 
Caleb Gushing, for whose editorials in the Herald 
the young man must have often set up the type, and 



THE TENTATIVE YEARS 55 

who was personally interested in the young appren- 
tice. That he was now capable of moral indignation, 
however, aside from his political fervor, is seen in 
his hatred of the Holy Alliance and of its menace to 
universal liberty. To his mother, at this time, he 
confided the fact — a secret no longer — of his con- 
tinued contributions to his employer's j)aper, and 
expressed surprise at his own success, " seeing I do 
not understand one single rule of grammar, and 
having a very inferior education." 

After the death of her daughter Elizabeth in 1822, 
the mother was lonesome and longed to see her son 
once more. Accordingly, in June, 1823, almost a 
year after his sister's death, the young Garrison set 
out by sea for Baltimore, sailing from Boston, a citj^ 
which he then saw for the first time. The place 
seemed inhospitable to him, because he was un- 
known. A decade later, when he was no stranger 
within its gates, Boston's mood was actively hostile, 
not passively indifferent. The meeting of mother 
and son after a separation of seven years was to be 
their last, for shortly following his return, she died 
at the early age of forty-five, worn by her labors and 
the burden selfishly or insanely laid upon her by her 
faithless husband. 

Federal politics, more bitter as the Federalist in- 
fluence grew less, engaged the young printer' s spare 
time, and, under the signature of '' Aristides," he 
defended the acrid ^^Tim" Pickering, and other- 
wise kept in the field as a writer on public matters. 
Among his friends at this time was a youth named 
Isaac Knapp, who was importantly associated with 



56 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

Garrison some years later. As Franklin was a 
leading spirit in the ''Junto'' among youth of 
similar condition in life, so Garrison was active in 
a debating club. Earnestness, not frivolity, took 
possession of both these men at a critical period. 
Yet the Wanderlust was not unknown to the ambi- 
tious printer of Newburyport. He felt the impulse 
which took a great American, Samuel G. Howe, 
and a yet greater Englishman, Lord Byron, to the 
war for Greek independence. West Point even did 
not seem to him then, as it did some years later, the 
least desirable of human goals. But these were 
healthy yearnings, and strengthening to the natural 
sanity of his character. 

Finishing his apprenticeship on the Herald at the 
end of 1825, Garrison, in March of the following 
year, issued the first number of the Free FresSj 
which succeeded the Essex Gourant, owned by Knapp 
but abandoned necessarily by him on account of his 
health. Garrison's old master, Allen, stood back of 
the enterprise. Always fond of a motto, Garrison 
gave his paper the sounding one of '' Oar Country, 
Our Whole Country, and Nothing but Our Coun- 
try," — a sentiment which he later utterly repudiated. 
With an independence well in advance of an era 
when partisanship was the breath of men's nostrils, 
the bold editor and publisher promised brave things 
of his paper. '' It shall be subservient to no party 
or body of men : and neither the craven fear of loss, 
nor the threats of the disappointed, nor the influence 
of power, shall ever awe one single opinion into 
silence," It was a sonorous, perhaps an arrogant 



THE TENTATIVE YEARS 67 

declaration, but it was sincere, and prophetic of that 
far simpler sentence, with which Garrison was soon 
to throw out the Liberator as a banner to the winds, 
in defiance of all the wealth, power and learning of 
a country already conscious of its possibilities and 
conscious too that it was under conviction of sin. 
The orotund and intensely prosaic style of the 
eighteenth century, so evident in the writings of 
nearly all our own publicists, was an inheritance to 
the generation in which Garrison found himself. 
He was not by any means free from the influence of 
this style, for he had founded his mode of expres- 
sion on obvious models, and the new influence be- 
ginning to come here from abroad was still academic 
and confined to trained minds. In spite of all this 
conventional influence, however, Garrison was be- 
ginning to make his own style, and to say things in 
exactly the way he wished to say them. He was 
supported in his efibrts by that potent aid, necessity, 
for he was obliged to compose his editorials in type, 
not on paper, and thus, because the setting of type 
is and always will be laborious, he inevitably 
gained in power of compression and of definite 
statement. The issue for May 18, 1826, contains his 
earliest significant reference to the evil of negro 
slavery, in a commendation of a just published poem 
on '^ Africa," written by a young woman. A 
month later he again refers editorially to the '^ un- 
chiding eye, ' ' as the poetess terms it, of the nation 
on this forbidden topic. 

About this time he received a poem, written in 
the metrical fashion of Woodworth's '' Old Oaken 



58 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

Backet" by one signing himself ** W., Haverhill," 
who soon proved to be Whittier, then making shoes 
at East Haverhill and inclined, as few cobblers have 
been, to stick to his last until dragged unwillingly 
into such glare of publicity as the restricted circula- 
tion of the Free Press could give him. The story of 
the discovery of the shy poet by the editor who, be- 
yond a kindly, generous heart, and a persistent 
character, had few opportunities to play the part of 
Maecenas, belongs to American literatui^. But the 
friendship between them, all-important to both in 
another and perhaps greater sense, lasted during 
life, though there was a time when Whittier, who 
was far more of a politician than Garrison, could 
not follow all his friend's conclusions. 

After six months the Free Press was sold and at 
once changed its politics, to support the candidature 
of Caleb Gushing for Congress ; in three months 
more it had ceased to exist. Garrison at least 
found by this experience that an independent editor 
would ''hardly be praised for his labors." A 
few months' work as a journeyman printer, and 
Garrison parted company with Newburyport, but not 
before he had attacked Caleb Gushing in a public 
meeting held in behalf of the latter. December, 
1826, found him in Boston, on his third visit to that 
place. Generously suffered to stay, without present 
means, at a boarding-house kept by one Bennett, 
then printing, under the editorship of David Lee 
Child, the Massachusetts Weekly Journal^ it was some 
weeks before Garrison found employment. During 
the following year he worked in not fewer and 



THE TENTATIVE YEAES 59 

probably in more than four different places, among 
them in Child's office. Discouragement over the 
outlook for a livelihood did not weaken his interest 
in politics, and he dashed with ardor into an unsuc- 
cessful movement to nominate Harrison Gray Otis 
to Congress, vice Daniel Webster, who had been 
elected to the Senate. This precipitate conduct on 
the part of so young a stranger to the town brought 
him into a lively controversy in the Boston Courier 
with an unknown signing himself " S.," who accused 
Garrison of verbosity, forth-putting conduct, and 
youthful impudence. Garrison, like the young 
Chatham, or rather Dr. Samuel Johnson for him, 
resented the imputation that youth was a crime, 
and not without dignity asserted that obscure as he 
might be then, his name would "one day be known 
to all the world." It was an early instance of Gar- 
rison's skill in pressing in through any weak part of 
an adversary's defense. 

Life under larger conditions soon began to do 
Garrison good ; he went to churches of various 
denominations, though still clinging to his own — 
the Baptist — and even admired at long social range 
the charms of Miss Emily Marshall, who later 
married a sou of that Otis whose cause the young 
stranger had championed. In the spring of 1828, 
Garrison became co-editor and publisher of the 
National Philanthropist^ with Nathaniel H. White, a 
roommate at the house of William Collier, who had 
established this first unqualified total abstinence 
paper ever issued, and who disposed of his venture 
to these young men after two years of struggle to 



60 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

make a one-ideaed enterprise profitable. Garrison's 
reformatory instincts now began to assert them- 
selves; moderate drinking; the '^ treating " common 
at May training and other public occasions when the 
militia enjoyed a foretaste of the debauchery of war 
without its perils ; the drunkenness at house-raisings 
and ship-launch ings — these and all forms of intem- 
perance were ardently assailed. Needless to say, 
the public did not ardently support a paper which 
dealt so ungraciously with its cherished indulgences. 
The young editor now began to show his appetite 
for universal reform ; he launched forth vigorously 
not only against intemperance, and temperance too 
for that matter, but also against Sabbath breaking, 
lotteries, infidelity ; proclaimed the virtues of peace ; 
and began thus early to recognize the desirability of 
securing the aid of women on equal terms in plans 
for social advancemeut. In January, 1828, he wrote 
some forceful words against the bill i)assed by the 
South Carolina legislature forbidding the teaching of 
negroes to read and write, and in March first met 
the man who was to concentrate his moral and in- 
tellectual vigor upon one absorbing and dominating 
purpose. Benjamin Luudy, a New Jersey Quaker, 
and a saddler by trade, had then just passed his 
thirty-ninth birthday. For thirteen years already 
he had been persistently talking and writing against 
human slavery in all its forms. After some tenta- 
tive newspaper work, and the loss of much of the 
money he had accumulated at his trade, he issued in 
July, 1821, at Mount Pleasant, O., the Genius of 
Universal Emancipation. It was the legitimate sue- 



THE TENTATIVE YEARS 61 

cessor in spirit of Elihu Embree's Emancipatory 
started the year previous in Tennessee, and far more 
radical than the Eev. John Finley Crow's rather 
tame Abolition Intelligencer ^ issued at Shelbyville, 
Ky., in 1822, though to him we owe the telling 
phrase '^soul-peddling" as his synonym for slave- 
selling. In the words of the Garrisons, the news- 
paper ''was begun without a dollar of capital, and 
with only six subscribers." 

No small part of Lundy's time was spent in travel- 
ing on foot and rarely on horseback, to carry out 
his unalterable plans. After three years, during 
which his paper gradually throve, it was moved 
from Tennessee, whither he had taken it, to Balti- 
more, nearer the seat of coming warfare — the editor 
walking the whole distance, and sowing good reform 
seed, especially amoug members of his sect, as he 
passed on. Lundy's obscurity and the breadth of 
his program, which called for ' ' gradual ' ' eman- 
cipation of the slave, saved him from odium at 
Baltimore, which was as ready as he to favor any 
intelligent scheme for the colonization of people of 
color. The Genius later became a weekly paper, 
and continued to grow, while the editor pushed his 
influence by journeys, meetings, and the formation 
of societies. Lundy reached Boston, by way of 
Philadelphia, New York, and Providence, making 
powerful friends to his cause on the journey, and 
there met the most potent character of all whom he 
was to influence. The earnest, undersized peripa- 
tetic, devoid of the charms of oratory, and afflicted 
with the infirmity of deafness, soon found a warm 



62 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

enthusiast in the well-nigh physically perfect Gar- 
rison. He was not so welcome to the Laodicean 
clergymen in Boston, who hated slavery enough to 
recommend Lundy's paper as safe reading, but who 
were unwilling to rouse their city from its comfort- 
able moral slumber by helping to start an anti- 
slavery society. It did not then seem probable that 
the unawakened young giant, now only twenty-two 
years old, although he cordially approved Lundy^s 
work in the columns of the FMlanthropist^ would 
be the one to carry it far beyond the bounds set by 
that devoted reformer. But in this first visit, the 
fructifying seed was sown in Garrison's mind. It 
took a second visit a few months later for Lundy to 
discover that ^'philanthropists are the slowest 
creatures breathing." A foretaste of coming ex- 
periences was had by Lundy when he made a public 
address for the first time in Boston on August 7, 
1828. This was reported by Garrison, who had 
meanwhile given up the Phila7iihropist. Lundy's 
proposition to start petitions for the abolition of 
slavery in the District of Columbia — the forerunner 
of those petitions which in the fast approaching 
years were to make so much trouble in national 
legislation and to keep the agitation against slavery 
alive whenever it seemed to languish — was too 
radical for the taste of the pastor of the Federal 
Street Baptist Church where Lundy was speaking, 
and he closed the meeting. Lundy, writing later to 
Garrison, of whom he now felt sure, reminded him 
that everything in his endeavor depended **on 
activity and steady perseverance," but that the 



THE TENTATIVE YEAES 63 

labor " would mostly fall on the shoulders of a few.'* 
He certaiuly happened on a coadjutor with the 
needed qualities and the patient shoulders. During 
this very month Garrison was writing to John Neal, 
the peppery editor of the Yankee, who had been 
twitting him on his obscurity, that his name would 
'^one day be known so extensively as to render 
private inquiry unnecessary. '^ "The task,*' he 
closes, with pardonable incision, " may be yours to 
write my biography." 

Garrison, when young, seems to have been a 
partisan in politics, as he was in religion. The 
conservatism of youth, so often seen in those who 
become more radical as they grow older, has been 
held to be a sign in the heavens of the development 
of an able man. The doctrine holds true in 
Garrison's case ; for until he had found a vantage- 
ground for his uncommon moral activities, it was 
natural that he should exercise them in the defense 
of those in whom he believed. In Newburyport he 
had championed party views, in spite of protesta- 
tions of independence, and his coming to Boston 
began, as has been seen, with an attempt politically 
to aid the cause of Harrison Gray Otis. It is not 
surprising, therefore, to find that Garrison, as the 
national campaign of 1828 was opening, accepted 
the editorship of a paper, to be published in 
Bennington, Vt., for the purpose of advocating the 
reelection of John Quiney Adams, and opposing 
the candidacy of Andrew Jackson. Started as late 
as October in 1828, the year of the national election, 
and published at two dollars a year, the Journal 



64 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

of the Times, if partisan, was neither subservient 
nor narrow. The newcomer in Bennington pro- 
claimed independence as his standard and assailed 
as the most despicable and degraded of beings the 
*' time-serving, shuffling, truckling editor." The 
supi^ression of intemj)erance, the gradual emanci- 
pation of the slave, the perpetuity of national 
peace, the cause of popular, practical education, 
and the encouragement of industries by means of 
the American System — these were side issues to be 
advanced along with the candidacy of the younger 
Adams, of whom Garrison did not then, or perhaps 
ever, i)retend to be especially fond. It was not in 
the temperament of either to love the other, but the 
time came when mutual respect was inevitable. 
The violence of his attacks on Jackson left nothing 
to be desired, though with a journalist's instinct 
Garrison seems to have presaged the defeat of his 
own side. From the first, as far as his limited 
space allowed, he urged the formation of auti- 
slavery societies, mainly, however, with a view to 
advancing the propaganda of colonization. Within 
a month he had written and set in motion a 
l^etition to Congress for the abolition of slavery 
in the District of Columbia, on the only ground 
then tenable — that such abolition would interfere 
with the rights of iio state. In a few weeks, 
through the hearty cooperation of the postmasters 
of Vermont, he had secured considerably over two 
thousand names throughout the state, and the peti- 
tion was presented on January 26, 1829. Earlier 
in this month the motion of Kepresentative Charles 



THE TENTATIVE YEAES 65 

Miner of Pennsylvania for legislation tending to 
gradual abolition in the District had been sup- 
ported by a decided majority. The Vermont pe- 
tition fared badly before the Committee on the 
District of Columbia, which frowned heavily on 
such attempts to disturb prevailing conditions and 
maintained that the local slave-trade was often a 
benefit to the slaves by removing them to other 
fields of enforced labor. To-day this suggestion 
reads like the finest irony, but at that time it 
only showed that the South, which appeared to 
take suggestions of a remote and "gradual'^ 
emancipation with reasonable complaisance, was 
quick to resent, as it did through this committee, 
any movement so radical as the Garrison petition. 

Working with zeal and ability, the youug 
country editor put his best into the Journal of the 
TimeSj and upheld without flinchiug such reforms 
as seemed vital. No religious doubts at this time 
had begun to disturb his orthodoxy, for he had 
not found out, as he did later, that when belief and 
self-interest did not square, it was not self-interest 
which usually suffered. He even dressed with no- 
ticeable care, made and retained valuable friend- 
ships, and was an orderly and a well-conducted 
citizen. This period of his life, in spite of hard 
and ef&cacious work, was one of incubation and 
strengthening for trials soon to come. 

Meanwhile Benjamin Luudy, watchful at all 
times lest his adherents sliould waver, had made 
sure that Garrison was to be counted upon ; al- 
though in the columns of his Genius he had found 



66 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEKISON 

it advisable to strengthen his young convert^ s pur- 
pose by praising his loyalty to the cause of emanci- 
pation. In the flush of dawning success, Garrison 
was persuaded by Lundy, who had gone afoot 
from Baltimore to Bennington, to become the active 
editor of the Genius, while Lundy should continue 
his walks about the country to secure more sub- 
scribers and thus also sow more seeds of reform. 
The last editorial hy Garrison in the Journal ap- 
peared on March 27, 1829, announcing that the 
time had now come for him to ' ' engage in a higher 
enterprise'^ in behalf of the slave population. 
*'I trust in God,'' he adds, ''that I may be the 
humble instrument of breaking at least one chain, 
and restoring one captive to liberty ; it will amply 
repay a life of severe toil." The keynote of his 
endeavor was struck in his statement, " Eeason 
has prevailed with me more than popular opinion." 
Never was choice more deliberate or more mature 
in so young and ardent a man. He gave up a 
definite and practical work, already showing good 
return, for another of the greatest uncertainty and 
wholly without promise of concrete achievement or 
ultimate results. 

Garrison's career in Bennington must have given 
him some reputation, for on his arrival in Boston 
on his way southward, he was invited on the Fourth 
of July to address the Congregational churches 
in behalf of colonization. This was not equal in 
importance to an invitation from the civic au- 
thorities, but it had its significance. In Boston 
to be thus requested by any large body of citizens 



THE TENTATIVE YEAES 67 

was at that time a sort of endorsement of character. 
The place was Park Street Church, where a few 
years later '' America " was sung for the first time, 
and the theme was '' Dangers to the Nation." 
These Park Street celebrations, which had begun in 
1823, were in sentiment partly religious, partly 
patriotic, and strongly anti-slavery. Garrison was 
the seventh orator in the series. Shortly before 
Independence Day, he for the first time suffered 
for his opinions. He was obliged to submit to 
tlie cost of a writ and fine for non-appearance 
at May training— an exercise in what he calls a 
'* sanguinary school," for which he had no inclina- 
tion. The incident was slight but demonstrated 
that from the start no thought of compromise was 
ever entertained by him. Later he suffered im- 
prisonment and even personal violence. Private 
and public abuse grew to be the atmosphere which 
he necessarily inhaled, because it completely sur- 
rounded him, but while he never flinched, neither 
did he ever show fight. His natural good-humor 
always combined to turn what was meant for stern 
if misguided public disapproval into an ironical 
situation. 

The oration, for such it proved to be, was pre- 
ceded by an ode written for the occasion by the 
Eev. John Pierpont and sung under the leading of 
Lowell Mason. Pierpont had, at about this time, 
fallen somewhat under the displeasure of the public 
through giving way to his unfortunate penchant for 
telling the truth, even though his words tweaked 
the port-wine noses of respectable Boston. The 



68 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

orator first assailed prevailing social and political 
weaknesses, but, this obviously rhetorical duty done, 
plunged head down at the national affliction, human 
slavery, "debasing in its effect, cruel in its opera- 
tion, fatal in its continuance." He attacked the 
narrowness of conventional patriotism in saying, 
'' I pity the man whose heart is not larger than a 
whole continent'^ ; in Boston's central fane of 
orthodoxy he exclaimed, ''What has Christianity 
done, by direct effort, for our slave poi)ulation? 
Comparatively nothing. She has explored the isles 
of the ocean for objects of commiseration ; but, 
amazing stupidity ! she can gaze without emotion 
on a multitude of miserable beings at home. ' ' He 
asserted '' the rights of the free states to demand a 
gradual abolition of slavery," though he did not 
admit the right or the disposition to use coercive 
measures. He discerned no immediate prospects 
of emancipation, but a "collision, full of sharp 
asperities and bitterness . . . with the inso- 
lence, and pride, and selfishness, of many a heart- 
less being." These foes he expected to conquer 
by "meekness, and perseverance, and prayer." 
More important than all this, and sounding the 
not« of his attack not on the South but on the 
general dead ness of conscience, he added, "We are 
all alike guilty. Slavery is strictly a national sin ; 
New England money has been expended in buying 
human flesh ; New England ships have been 
freighted with sable victims ; New England men 
have assisted in foiging the fetters of those who 
groan in bondage." Leaving this cud of bitter re- 



THE TENTATIVE YEAES 69 

flectiou for self-righteous yet thoughtful Boston, he 
started soon upon his southward jour uey. The late 
Eev. Leonard Woolsey Bacon, son of that more 
illustrious Kev. Leonard Bacon, the champion of 
colonization who once admitted publicly that 
*'he rarely spoke of the devil in the pulpit and 
never of Mr. Garrison," said of this oration by 
the young editor: "He could repeat the familiar 
commonplaces of his six predecessors as if they 
were startling novelties and speak of the slaves, the 
subjects of more thought, sympathy, prayer and 
self-denying effort than any other class of people 
in the country, as those ^over whose sufferings 
scarcely an eye weeps or a heart melts or a tongue 
pleads either to God or man,' for whom ^Chris- 
tianity has done by direct effort comparatively 
nothing' " — an excellent epitome of the anti-Garri- 
son sentiment. 

The close of this first portion of his career leaves 
him not yet clear as to the precise course to follow, 
but committed to attack in some fashion the vexing 
l^roblem of human bondage. 



CHAPTEE III 

EDITOR AND PAMPHLETEER 

LuNDY, who, since leaving his new partner in 
Bennington, had gone to Hayti with some emanci- 
pated slaves and had returned, was waiting for 
Garrison when the latter arrived in Baltimore in 
August, 1829. This patient yet restless soul would 
doubtless have been content to go on indefinitely 
proclaiming the evils of slavery, scouring the 
country for subscribers or disciples, starting new 
societies, and wearing out mind and body by his 
exhausting labors. It was not so, however, with 
Garrison, who had already suffered a sea- change, 
and was now dissatisfied with the rhetorical pro- 
gram of his Fourth of July address. Still trusting 
in the methods of Providence, he saw his way to 
accelerate their progress by a demand for immediate, 
not gradual emancipation. The wonder is that in a 
practical and direct character like his the doctrine 
of gradualism could so long have found lodgment. 
He was now decided, and Lundy was obliged to 
make a pact by which each should sign his own 
initials to articles printed in the Genius of TJni- 
versal Emancipation^ which for the last five of its 
eight years had been issued weekly. During the 
editor's trip to Hayti the paper had had one of its 
intervals of rest — this time eight months — and was 



EDITOE AND PAMPHLETEER 71 

now ready for steady work under the new manage- 
ment, with James Cropper of Liverpool engaged to 
furnish information as to the state of the public 
mind in Great Britain over the now active move- 
ment for emancipation in the West Indies. 

Lundy, who, like Garrison, preferred Hayti to 
Liberia, and was suspicious of the American 
Colonization Society, tested the sincerity of "hu- 
mane conscientious slaveholders" by offering, 
through a standing advertisement, to transport, 
free of cost, a considerable number of slaves to 
Hayti, provided that they were trained to agricul- 
ture or mechanical pursuits. Slaveholders were 
either lacking in a passion for humanity, or else, 
as is quite likely, failed to see the Genmsy for 
nothing came of this liberal and genuine offer. 

Garrison's opinions were now crystallizing rap- 
idly. Not only was he beginning to distrust the 
ingenuousness of the Colonization Society, though 
he did not yet break with it, but he was coming to 
see the hostile animus in the South against the 
free negro. At about this time he announced one 
of his dogmas— and they were many : the perfect 
equality of all portions of the human race. Given 
the same chance, the result would be '^ equally 
brilliant, equally productive, equally grand,'' no 
matter '' how many breeds are amalgamated." It 
may be said here that the word ''biology" in its 
present sense was not born until after Garrison's 
ideas had become fixed. Whether, had he known 
the postulates of this new phase of scientific thought, 
he would in any wise have modified his own extreme 



72 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

opinions, it is; impossible to say. But it is safe to 
assert that had the scientific advance, under such 
headship as that of Charles Darwin, reached the 
point in 1830 at which it had arrived forty years 
later, there had been no such extremists in their 
sphere of social ethics as AYilliam Lloyd Garrison 
and his followers. 

There still lingers in the public mind a belief 
that had the national government contrived a plan 
to buy the slaves of their owners, in some way the 
loss and the cost of the Civil AYar might have been 
avoided. Garrison thus early did not favor such a 
compromise as national purchase. Slavery was 
wrong, and a bargain with slaveholders was com- 
pounding a felony. Justice and not a trade was 
what he demanded in the Genius. He was warm in 
his opposition to the making and selling of ardent 
spirits J he cried loudly against the breaches of 
faith with the Georgia Indians ; lie early favored — 
though mildly — the boycott of the products of slave 
labor : in these and various other reforms, he was 
zealous in the columns of Lundy's paper. But he 
still kept within his religious circumscriptions, and, 
strangely enough, was wholly conservative as re- 
gards the greater political freedom of women — even 
dubbing a petition of some Pennsylvania w^omen 
for recognition of the rights of Indians, *'an un- 
called-for interference.^^ 

While Lundy and Garrison were thus working 
faithfully together and at the same time pulling 
slowly apart, not in hostility but like vessels bound 
on the same long errand, each on its individual 



EDITOR AIST) PAMPHLETEER 73 

course into wider seas, a few thiDgs of import 
to their cause were happeniug. Guerrero, the 
President of Mexico, had emancipated some ten 
thousand slaves in that country, then including 
Texas. This territory was already marked as the 
vantage-ground where slavery could be strength- 
ened, provided that it could be brought by some 
means into the Union — a scheme which the un- 
worldly but not unobservant Lundy was quick to 
denounce. The inoperative American Convention 
for the Abolition of Slavery held its twenty-first 
biennial session late in the year 1829, and repeated 
its usual program of doing nothing to anger the 
South or to arouse the North. The condition of 
this *' convention," which first met in Philadelphia 
in 1794, is clearly shown by the foct that it held its 
next and last meeting in 1838. But while these 
incidents were taking place, something vital oc- 
curred to show that the South was watchful, if not 
alarmed. * ^ Walker' s A ppeal , ' ' published by David 
Walker, a Boston negro, attacked ably and with 
vigor the policy of the Colonization Society, and 
naturally assailed the whole institution of slavery. 
Its third edition (1830) countenanced slave insur- 
rections—a horror of which the South had always 
been genuinely afraid ; but even before the edition 
appeared. Garrison had written in the Genius that 
he '* deprecated" the circulation of this powerful 
essay. A price was set on the head of the author, 
who, happily perhaps for him, died a few months 
later, though not before the Mayor of Boston 
(Harrison Gray Otis) had found it necessary to 



U WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

answer demands from the South for his punishment. 
It is not wholly clear at this day why Garrison, 
even in this period of his development, should have 
regarded the pamphlet as "most injudicious'' ; he 
had already denounced slavery in the abstract in 
equally violent terms. The precipitation of a crisis 
is seldom injudicious from the revolutionary point 
of view, and it was fortunate for Garrison's cause 
that the " Appeal " produced in one Southern state 
(Georgia) a stringent law, forbidding the admission 
of free blacks, or the teaching of any blacks, slave 
or free, to read or write, and making it a capital 
offense to circulate pamphlets of "evil tendency 
among our domestics." 

Now at last Garrison was to suffer a little for the 
very truth's sake — the truth, as he saw it and spoke 
it and wrote it. 

Thus far he had been let alone and allowed to 
say and write what he pleased — a tolerance not 
wholly satisfactory even to the most philosophic of 
reformers. But when in the Genius he accused 
Francis Todd of Newburyport of engaging in the 
domestic slave-trade between Baltimore and New 
Orleans, he found Lundy and himself involved in a 
suit for libel brought by Todd, and in an action for 
publishing the alleged libel brought by the Grand 
Jury of Maryland. Though well defended at the 
trial. Garrison was found guilty on the state of 
Maryland's charge. Unable to pay the fine and 
costs, about one hundred dollars in all, he was im- 
prisoned for seven weeks in Baltimore jail begin- 
ning April 17, 1830 — as innocent and pure-minded 



EDITOE AND PAMPHLETEER 76 

a culprit as ever found himself on the wrong side 
of prison- bars. Several results ensued from this 
legal restraint of the young editor. The partner- 
ship with Lundy was dissolved, and the Genius 
of Universal Emancipation was henceforth issued 
monthly, the weekly issue having ceased on March 
5, 1830. Captain Nicholas Brown, who carried 
the slaves in the ship Francis^ never carried another 
live cargo, nor did the respectable Mr. Todd hence- 
forth undertake to send one. 

No man ever demonstrated more faithfully that 
'■ ' stone walls do not a prison make ' ' than the new 
denizen of Baltimore jail. Hehelped and encouraged 
the prisoners ; he remonstrated with the owners of 
runaway slaves ( ' ' slavites " is a word apparently 
of his own coining) ; he often sat at the warden's 
table, wrote a pamphlet on his trial, and on the 
walls of his cell or ''multicapsular apartment," as 
he termed it, inscribed one of his best sonnets be- 
ginning, ''High walls and huge the body may con- 
fine.'^ Other sonnets and verses followed under 
the stimulus of confinement without contrition for 
having done right. With no close resemblance, 
these poetical effusions recall John Bunyan's much 
less melodious efforts under similar conditions. Gar- 
rison's powers of versification and his ability to make 
an apt Latin quotation whenever he needed one, are 
not easily explicable, when we consider that al- 
though he was not an ignorant man, he could not 
fairly be called an educated one. Franklin also had 
the fashion- of using Latin whenever he needed it. 
This facility in these two remarkable men may per- 



76 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

haps be attributed to the educational influence of 
the printer's case. 

To this by no means dismal, but very persistent 
cry from the tombs, now couched in verse and again 
in wonderfully vigorous prose, the country at large 
began to make answer. Newspapers mentioned and 
often espoused the cause of this haiDpy warrior, who 
was not beating against his bars but was getting a 
larger audience than he had when free. Even 
Henry Clay, the most lovable opportunist of Amer- 
ican political history, was inclined, through the in- 
tercession of Whittier, to lielp pay the fine, but 
Arthur Tappan, of New York, the warm-hearted 
sustainer of many good causes, with whom Garrison 
afterward had occasion to disagree, preceded him 
with money for the editor's release, which took 
place on June 5th. It was long before such a rest 
came again into Garrison's life. 

Calling on Tappan on his way home, he soon 
reached Newburyport, a far better known man than 
when he last left it. By July he was back in Bal- 
timore, aided by the receipt through Lundy of one 
hundred dollars from an entire stranger, Ebenezer 
Dole, of Hallowell, Me., a gift which he accepted, 
with characteristic simplicity and openness, as a 
loan on interest. He had returned to Baltimore, 
after an unsuccessful attempt at home, to get means 
to revive the weekly publication of the Genius, and 
to face Todd's personal suit for libel, but was 
unable to wait until the trial in the fall. The 
suit being uncontested, a verdict was rendered for 
the plaintiff with damages for one thousand dol- 



EDlTOli AND PAMPHLETEEE 77 

lais, with the loser outside of the Maryland juris- 
diction. 

Garrison then did the inevitable thing, for in 
August he issued a prospectus for an abolition 
l^aper to be published in Washington and called the 
Public Liberator and Journal of the Times. It was to 
oj)pose war, and the distillation, importation, sell- 
ing, drinking or offering to drink, of alcoholic 
liquors, and was to give ''a dignified support to 
Henry Clay and the American System." 

In the fall of 1830 he lectured in Philadelphia and 
in New York, but attracted no special attention, ex- 
cept among those whose sympathies had already 
been aroused against the evils of slavery. Of more 
importance to him was the meeting at this time with 
James and Lucretia Mott. Still narrow in his re- 
ligious views, he was touched by their broad spirit. 
With Dr. Leonard Bacon he did not get on so well. 
"The Jesuitry of his reasoning" struck Garrison, 
and time did not heal the breach which opened at 
their first meeting over the question of colonization. 
All the hard words ever uttered against this worthy 
champion of a more moderate policy by the never 
compromising, never conciliatory radical have been 
paid back with equal vehemence by Dr. Bacon's 
son. 

It had taken Garrison a reasonably long time to 
arrive at definite conclusions and to plan an offen- 
sive campaign. It was now becoming clear to him, 
as his own religious certitudes became less firm, 
that supineness on the part of the Christian Church 
and of all denominations in it, was preventing the 



78 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

acceptance of such doctrines as he would fain spread. 
As was the only course in those days, he always 
looked for his audiences among people who were in- 
terested in various phases of moral and religious 
welfare — among the distinctly middle ranks, the 
general human average. He was too wise from the 
beginning to seek a fashionable hearing, for he 
knew the spiritual deadness of the comfortable 
classes. A man with experience himself in the 
humble walks of life, he had the advantage of know- 
ing that the proletarian is not easily aroused over 
problems in which his own betterment is not in- 
volved. Therefore he usually sought to influence 
his own kind, the earnest obscure idealists of every- 
day living who when sufficiently awakened can ac- 
complish, — and best under democratic conditions, 
— results impossible even to great wealth, high po- 
sition, and transcendent abilities. To move this 
impressionable yet cautious mass of thought, he 
must make a diversion in those ranks to which his 
constituency was still allied with an attachment dif- 
ficult to understand in these days of looser, certainly 
more tolerant, religious bonds. Already he had be- 
gun to proclaim that a ^' Christian slaveholder is as 
great a solecism as a religious atheist, a sober 
drunkard, or an honest thief," but soon he was to 
strike nearer home, for he knew that as long as the 
North was morally asleep, the South could well af- 
ford to nod, with one eye open for particularly ob- 
jectionable assaults on its '^ peculiar institution." 
In his native town he was allowed to make one 
speech in a Congregational church, and perhaps 



EDlTOli AND PAMPHLETEER 79 

might not have had the door shut against him the 
second night, had he contented himself with por- 
traying the evils of slavery. Listening to such ad- 
dresses was then a mild sort of pastime ; the blood 
of the conventionally righteous is always gently 
stirred at recitals of iniquity sufficiently remote. 
But when Garrison told his fellow townsmen that 
New Englanders were "equally culpable with the 
slave dealers and slave owners," it was more than 
the honest, debt-paying, God-fearing, unidealistic 
majority of the church people could stand, and 
so Garrison, letting fly a newspaper barb only 
moderately tipped with severity, left for Boston, 
early in October, 1830. 

It was not till the middle of the month that Gar- 
rison, whose communications to the Boston Tran- 
script on his favorite topic had met with a closure 
from the cautious editor, could find a hall in which 
to speak — and this hall was offered by freethinkers to 
one who was still a consistent member of the Baptist 
church. In the audience met to hear him were six 
men of prominence, three of whom, Lyman Beecher, 
Ezra Gannett, and Moses Grant, remained conserva- 
tive toward the anti-slavery movement, while the 
other three, Samuel J. May, Samuel E. Sewall, and 
A. Bronson Alcott were soon to be reckoned on the 
radical side, though Alcott could never be called a 
true Garrisonian. This early division among chance 
hearers, three of whom were ministers, was pro- 
phetic of the sharp social cleavage soon to take 
plaee as this obscure man of daily toil made himself 
more and more felt. He was now thoroughly con- 



80 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON 

vinced of the disingeuuousiiess of the coloDization 
policy, and the burden of his speech was on this 
subject. Lyman Beecher's coolness may easily 
have been more firmly set by this attack on a move- 
ment which naturally appealed to his more elderly, 
but not ungenerous mind as a somewhat imperfect 
yet not hopeless attempt to work toward a good end. 
While the leader of orthodoxy shrank through 
temperament and training from the fiery zeal of this 
young enthusiast, the more receptive May was 
warmed by new fires, and soon found himself at 
odds with the conservative side of Unitarianism. 
As a religious body, the Unitarians, in spite of their 
successful schism perfected in the first third of the 
nineteenth century, were by no means without cold- 
ness and reserve toward ethical and intellectual 
novelties. At the same time, when we consider the 
various attitudes of the general religious mind of the 
country, the balance is somewhat in favor of Uni- 
tarianism as regards its part in anti-slavery annals. 
It was cold, officially, toward Transcendentalism, the 
Brook Farm movement, and the more radical side 
of anti-slavery ; but had there been no LTnitarianism, 
with its disintegrating tendency, the movement 
under Garrison against a united orthodoxy would 
have i)roceeded less swiftly. As it was, just as soon 
as the whole anti -slavery sentiment gained, with the 
next ten years, a real footing, it came to pass that 
the more centralized Evangelical church, with its 
machinery, such as the radicals never j^ossessed, 
found a way to divide the now fast-running stream 
of public opinion into channels shrewdly contrived 



EDITOR AND PAMPHLETEER 81 

to irrigate both orthodoxy aud a more gently- 
tempered sentiment against the sin of human 
slavery. 

It will be seen that as long as Garrison dealt with 
the personal conscience, and appealed to this and 
that individual to come over to his way of thinking, 
he was supremely successful ; when he threatened 
organized religion, he met a force against which all 
voices cryiug in the wilderness have generally been 
unable to contend with entire success. Just at pres- 
ent he was beginning to get here aud there a hope- 
ful convert, notably such men as May and Sewall of 
the devoted, loyal type. 

Without a press to push the evangel of any re- 
form, the liveliest human eloquence is a voice and 
nothing more. Garrison moved as swiftly as he 
moved earnestly, when he succeeded in issuing the 
first number of the Liberator on the first day of the 
year 1831, for it was only in August, 1830, that he 
had put out his prospectus for the paper which he 
intended to edit in Washington. His earlier motto 
was ' ' My country is the world ; my counti-ymen are 
mankind," and this sentiment, with the change of 
'^ My " to '' Our" was adopted as the legend for the 
Liberator. There was no ''promotion" of this 
scheme, no advance heralding, no efforts to saddle 
the burden of the enterprise on the public by is- 
suance of bonus-carrying stock. It was a simple, 
straightforward newspaper undertaking, relying on 
ability and earnestness and not on piizes or other 
modern encouragements to buy a mediocre thing. 
The type for the first three issues was borrowed, and 



82 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

then some second-band type was secured from a 
foundry. A hand-press did the printing. Garri- 
son was the editor, but his publishing partner was 
Isaac Knapp, who had been with him in Newbury- 
port. The office was also their home and here, for 
a year and a half, they ate, slept, and composed 
their type. It was Garrison's good fortune, as has 
before been noted, to be able to set up his editorials 
from his brain into his composing stick, a great 
saving in the laboriousness of composition and a 
constant check on verbosity. With the aid of a 
colored assistant, who later graduated from Dart- 
mouth College, these indefatigable young men, by 
dint of working fourteen hours a day, were able 
each week to set up and distribute as many as 100,- 
000 types, run their i)ress and mail their papers, to 
say nothing of the labor of editing the '' copy.'^ In 
the first issue appeared Garrison's famous manifesto : 
' ' I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not 
excuse— I will not retreat a single inch— awe? Iivill 
be heard.^^ It must be geuerously admitted that he 
swerved in no way from this grim program until the 
last slave in the nation was free. He recanted his 
earlier belief in gradual abolition, and stood for the 
''immediate enfranchisement of our slave popula- 
tion." With politics and differing religious sects 
he purposed to have no affiliations, although he 
welcomed all cooperation with the cause he espoused. 
But money as well as zeal and self-sacrifice was 
needed, and this, in occasional crises, was supplied 
by Ellis Gray Loring and Samuel E. Sewall, sturdy 
friends of the man and the cause. 



EDITOK AND PAMPHLETEP]E 83 

From the opening number there was much in the 
Liberator to irritate the pro -slavery element. The 
famous cut of a slave auction conducted within sight 
of the nation's caiDital, which surmounted the name 
of the paper, was galling, and often elicited a " deep 
and bitter curse " ; even Sewall objected to it. If it 
was '^rude," as the Garrisons admit, it certainly 
was effective, as well as typical of an era when it 
seemed requisite, in any graphic presentation of 
human activity, for all characters portrayed to be 
crowned with a tall beaver hat, whether the wearer 
were engaged in driving an engine, hunting a fox, 
taking an oath of office, witnessing a prize-fight, 
or, as in the present instance, buying and selling 
slaves. 

It was not long before Garrison had reason to be- 
lieve that he was getting a hearing ; and this was 
what he desired. There is no evidence to show that 
making money or even a livelihood out of his paper 
had entered his head. From here and there sub- 
scribers drifted in ; even the generally apathetic 
free blacks seemed to take a practical interest in the 
new venture. But abuse, loud and increasing, was 
the real sign that his strident cry against the great- 
est barrier to human development, and to him, the 
deepest sin of all the black sins of the race, was 
heard. The Abolitionists early saw that little was 
to be gained by talking solely to the already con- 
verted. They, therefore, did not seek to call the 
righteous to repentance, but sedulously and skil- 
fully inflamed their opponents and gradually per- 
formed the far harder task of arousing the inatten- 



84 WILLIAM LLOYD GABRISON 

live minds of the morally indifferent. By provok- 
ing rei)lie8 to their own exhaustless vocabulary of 
abuse and criticism, they began to put the pro- 
slavery side on the defensive. Now liuman nature 
will long tolerate a slumbering evil, but when the 
monster reais its head and begins to argue its case, 
then moral torpidity, even among the complacently 
respectable, disappears and healthier conditions 
prevail. In this sort of warfare, Garrison was a 
sure strategist. He had a power to irritate not ex- 
celled even by Weudell Philli]>s, who is to appear 
somewhat later. To a South Carolina editor, who 
calls him an "apostate Yankee" and promises to 
bring his " bundle of sedition" under the ban of law, 
should he show himself within that state, Garrison 
gives assurance that he intends as soon as possible 
to move the Liberator to some slave state where he 
''can meet the enemy on his own ground." Doubt- 
less he meant this, but it was before he felt that dis- 
quieting rope about his body, placed there only a 
few months later by a fairly respectable Boston 
mob. Perhaps he then first realized what his fate 
would surely have been, had he carried out his 
threat. When one reads the scorching deimncia- 
tions of this enthusiast, this absolutist in the realm 
of individual morals, it is hard to accept the fact 
that Garrison hated the sin and not the sinner, but 
unless this fact is implicitly taken for granted, his 
character is sure to be misunderstood. We must 
believe his own words that he would not ''harm a 
hair of their [the slaveholders'] heads, nor injure 
them in their lawful i3roperty." He was as im- 



EDITOR A:N^D pamphleteer 85 

partial in this matter as any j udge on the bench 
sentencing a criminal not because he is a wretch, 
but because he has committed a crime. 

Although there was not a single subscriber to the 
Liberator J ''white or black, south of the Potomac," 
Gales and Seaton, who had refused the columns of 
the National Intelligencer to a brother editor to de- 
fend himself, permitted a correspondent to suggest 
in this paper that the people of the South ''offer an 
adequate reward to any person who will deliver him 
[Garrison] dead or alive into the hands of the au- 
thorities of any state south of the Potomac" ; the 
proposal, however, seemed to these editors "inex- 
pedient to act upon." In various Southern places 
measures were taken to prev^ent the circulation 
or possession of copies of the Liberator or of 
Walker's " Appeal"— a work which Garrison him- 
self, as we have seen, had not up to this time en- 
dorsed. 

If Garrison felt no alarm over accumulated 
threats, certainly his friends did not fail to see the 
possibility of bodily harm to him, and Arthur Tap- 
pan went so far as to send him a letter of credit for 
one thousand dollars with which to protect himself, 
—whether by running away, or by employing coun- 
sel in case of a suit, the generous donor does not 
specify. The obvious way to suppress this "mad- 
man" was to reach him through the Massachusetts 
jurisdiction, or through the authority vested in the 
mayor of Boston ; but this official— then Harrison 
Gray Otis -was able only to assure the petitioners, 
and in particular Senator Robert Y. Hayne, of the 



86 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

''insignificant countenance and sui)port which the 
paper derives from this city." 

The South was in no mood to be satisfied with the 
conservatism, such as Otis' s, that saw no real dan- 
ger and certainly no punishment waiting for an ed- 
itor who had not put himself outside the pale of es- 
tablished law. If there were no law to catch him 
in Massachusetts, it was i)ossible to concoct one 
elsewhere. The governor of Georgia, by the un- 
militant name of Lumpkin, approved a bill passed 
at the end of 1831, offering a reward of five thou- 
sand dollars to any person or persons who should 
cause the arrest and conviction of the editor of the 
Liberator. It was certainly a fat and tempting sum, 
such as might well have induced a modern spadassin 
to lure Garrison by any means or forcibly abduct 
him away from safety. The wonder is that no at- 
tempt was made to seize his person. 

Garrison thus far had not really warmed up to 
the occasion ; he had renounced colonization, de- 
nounced gradual emancipation, and begun to preach 
immediate abolition, but the seal had not yet been 
really taken from the vial of his wrath. The Nat 
Turner insurrection of slaves near Southampton, 
Va., on August 22, 1831, and the terrible punish- 
ments inflicted on the participants in that short- 
lived menace to the South's ''peculiar institution," 
gave him an opportunity to send forth a blast of 
denunciation. He laid the blame for this uprising 
at the door of slavery, and disavowed all responsi- 
bility for exciting the passious of the insurrection- 
ists. With a slip of logic unusual for him, he held 



EDITOE AND PAMPHLETEER 87 

that Turner probably never had seen a copy of the 
Liberator^ yet took comfort to himself that he ^'had 
preached to the slaves the pacific precepts of Jesus 
Christ." Preaching, without hearers or readers, is 
not likely to be effectual. 

It is to be noticed here that whereas the *' in- 
famous'^ Garrison, as he had now become, never 
sanctioned or said anything directly to encourage 
an uprising of slaves against their ^' masters,'^ 
Theodore Dwight, a Connecticut lawyer, had said 
as early as 1794 that ^'the same law, which justifies 
the enormities committed by civilized nations 
when engaged in war, will justify slaves for every 
necessary act of defense against the wicked and un- 
provoked outrages committed against their peace, 
freedom and existence." 

The immediate effect, both in the North and the 
South, of this forceful agitation was to make the 
negro's lot still harder. What for a long time luid 
been social underrating, now became distinct op- 
pression. The '^nigger" was the casus belli; liis 
l^resence in churches, schools, and in all public 
relations was a continual reminder that, had his 
skin not been so black. Garrison's talk had not 
been so disturbing. This increasing ferment of 
caste seems now most explicable, and incidental to 
conditions which i)recede a change of social feeling 
from a lower to a higher plane. It is, however, sur- 
prising to recall that, coincidental with the state 
of mind following the Turner rebellion, the General 
Assembly of Virginia listened with calmness and 
reason to several attempts to bring out in speeches 



88 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKEISON 

before that body the seriousness and importance 
of dealing with the subject of shivery. Nothing 
came of these rational efforts, but they were char- 
acteristic of the Virginia attitude — the recognition 
by some of her legislators of her occupancy of the 
middle ground between the extreme South and the 
extreme North. It was her aforetime Federalism 
come back to life, though only for a while. It was 
her ancient sanity and ability once more, though 
ineffectually, finding expi'ession. 

In the first year of his editorshii^ no thought ap- 
pears to hav^e disturbed Garrison as to the finality 
of law as a refuge for the oppressed. He urges 
upon his colored friends, now beginning to rally 
about his standard and to read his utterances, to 
abide by the tabernacles of justice and to appeal to 
established means for redress. Looking forward 
two decades to his violent denunciations of the 
Constitution, it seems hardly possible that there 
ever could have been a William Lloyd Garrison 
who wrote : '' Thanks be to God that we have such 
a Constitution ! Vv^ithout it, the liberty of every 
man — white as well as colored — would be in 
jeopardy. There it stands, firm as the rock of 
Gibraltar, a high refuge from oppression." He 
was young, he still retained faith in most of the 
fixities of civilization and had yet to learn, if he 
ever did learn, that the basis of all democratic 
government is compromise. Therefore he still had 
reason to hope that honest appeals to the human 
heart and conscience would rouse men from their 
long sleep of acquiescence in national wrong-doing ; 



EDITOK AND PAMPHLETEEK 89 

this confidence lent courage to Lis pen. The great 
results for which he strove were at last reached by 
means far different from those he taught, but he 
seems never to have lost faith in argument, backed 
by a relentless logic peculiarly his own. What he 
really did accomplish was largely owing to this 
perfect trust in his own methods, his own weapons 
of offense. It is fortunate that he lacked the 
paralyzing faculty of self-analysis ; there was ever 
before him an oi^en field of battle and only one 
right side. No devil's advocate tempted him to 
listen to the merits of the cause of such a foe as 
slavery. '' I am determined," he said at about this 
time, '' to give slaveholders and their apologists as 
much uneasiness as possible." 

If Garrison^ s cause was beginning to quicken in 
the loins of time, that of African colonization was 
by no means dead. Strongly moved by the resent- 
ment shown at New Haven toward a plan forming, 
under stimulation, in part, of Arthur Tappan, for a 
sort of industrial college for colored students in that 
academic place, then much frequented by Southern- 
ers and Cubans ; and still further exasperated by 
sentiments in Massachusetts favorable to the 
Colonization Society, he began to open a lively fire 
against its principles, and to lay the foundations of 
his "Thoughts on Colonization," a polemic destined 
to be the most coherent and definite, and perhaps 
the most effective of all his publications. 

In these first issues of the Liberator he also 
assailed free-masonry, capital punishment, im- 
prisonment for debt, the manufacture and sale of 



90 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISOK 

liquors, and the use of tobacco, and advocated the 
doctrines of peace, as well as the cause of the 
Cherokee Indians in their fruitless contest with the 
state of Georgia. Had there been other evils to 
attack, other good causes to espouse, the editor of 
this most catholic of sheets would have straddled no 
line between the wrong and right sides. If he was 
a fanatic, the field he occupied was not narrow, 
whatever may have been his judgments. It is 
absurd to modern ways of thinking to cherish as 
strong feelings about the use of tobacco as about 
the question of capital punishment ; but this man, 
possibly in this respect a reflection of his times, did 
not deal in relative ethical values — he was an ex- 
tremist in everything. The measure of his preju- 
dices was the measure of the immense evils he 
assailed — they were concrete facts, and not wind- 
mills in the imaginary form of giants, nor was he a 
soft-hearted, crack-pated ironic Quixote. He was 
eminently a practical man in method, though an 
enthusiast in thought and emotion. Kepu table and 
sane men and women — all idealists, and of various 
walks in life — wore, however, beginning to listen to 
him and read him. 

Infuriated by his words, hurled with the pre- 
cision, and it must be added, the deliberate desire 
to madden with which the banderillero throws his 
darts at the tortured bull, the South had begun to 
show a real frenzy which troubled him ''less than 
the wind.^' At about this time, according to a 
remarkable anecdote given in the Llfe^ there visited 
Garrison a man far different from the hot-headed 



EDITOE AND PAMPHLETEER 91 

Southerner — one accustomed to persuade and seduce 
by the very force and charin of his wonderful per- 
sonality. But even Aaron Burr, then an old man, 
could not convince the implacable Garrison that 
his cause was hopeless and that his struggles were 
mere folly. Like some malign apparition he ap- 
peared in Boston to dissuade the young editor from 
going on with his papei-, and utterly failing in his 
mission, he vanished, self-poised and mysterious as 
he ever was through life. 

So passed this year, the most important of Garri- 
son's career thus far. A journal of influence had 
been established which was to maintain its exist- 
ence, not, however, without hard periods, for thirty- 
five years, and then to stop by the wise decision of 
its editor and not from necessity. Eeal friends 
had also been made, — friends who did not hesitate 
to speak their own minds and follow their own 
courses, not disciples bound to adulation. Garrison 
was now on the tlireshold of a new phase of his 
career, which was to bring him into wider and 
larger relations with the whole country and make 
him something more than a crier of a new Boston 
notion. Already in May of this year (1831) he had 
sounded a note for the formation of a national anti- 
slavery society; ''such a society,'' he says, ''must 
be organized forthwith." In June there assembled 
the first annual convention of the colored people 
of the United States, but its scope fell far short of 
what was needed. 

Oliver Johnson and the Garrisons have graphic- 
ally described the formation of the New England 



92 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

Auti-Slavery Society, the preliminary meeting of 
Avhieli was held on November 13, 1831, in Samuel E. 
Se wall's office and was attended by fifteen persons. 
On January 1, 1832, there was adopted, with the ex- 
ception of the i^reamble, a constitution drafted by 
David Lee Child (the husband of Lydia Maria 
Chikl), Samuel E. Sewall, William Lloyd Garrison, 
Ellis Gray Loi'ing, and Oliver Johnson. The follow- 
ing Friday, in the midst of a fierce northeaste)', the 
adjourned meeting for the settlement of the pre- 
amble was held in a room beneath the African 
Baptist Church on the northern side of Beacon Hill. 
The night and the place, in the very heart of the 
negro ghetto of Boston, suggest that these adventur- 
ous spirits had chosen Darkest Africa as the spot 
whence they were to flash the first formidable and 
concentrated light on what seemed to them the 
greatest darkness, because spii-itual, of the country 
at large. The preamble was passed and signed by 
twelve who were present, all orthodox in their re- 
ligious profession, among them Arnold Buffum, the 
devoted New Bedford Quaker, and a hatter by 
trade. Child, Loring and Sewall— the only law- 
yers in the meeting and all of them Unitarians — did 
not sign, but soon after came into line with the 
other members of the society. Garrison would have 
liked a more definite pronunciamento, but had to 
be content with a declaration of sentiments, the 
closing part of which was as follows : ''While we 
advance these opinions as the principles on which 
we intend to act, we declare we will not operate on 
the existing relations of society by other than 



EDITOK AND PAMPHLETEER 93 

peaceful aud lawful means, and that we will give 
no cotiutenance to violence or insurrection." Gar- 
rison's remark as this sturdy little band once more 
braved the herce wind of a Boston winter night 
has been often quoted and may advisedly be re- 
peated. Although it lacks the nervous force of 
spontaneity, it is characteristic of his usual gravity 
of expression and fondness for i)ropbetic utterance : 
'' We have met to-night in this obscure school- 
house ; our numbers are few and our influence is 
limited ; but, mark my prediction, Faneuil Hall 
shall ere long echo with the principles we have set 
forth. We shall shake the nation by their mighty 
power." ^ It was a true forecast, but there were 
other forces rising, other men and women in other 
places, swiftly marshaling under the banners of 
professedly irenic measures, to hurry on a move- 
ment to which there could be but one issue — fratri- 
cidal strife. The war between the states was, in a 
sense, already begun by these early skirmishers on 
the borders between the fixed security of organized 
society and the dark retreats of incipient rebellion. 
Garrison, as was fitting, became corresponding 
secretary of the new society, with Buffum as presi- 
dent and Joshua Coffin as recording secretary. It 
was the first definite opposition to the American 
Colonization Society, a short-lived auxiliary of 
which had been formed in Massachusetts in 1831. 
About twenty-five per cent, of the seventy-two 
signers of the constitution were colored. The main 
object of the society was ^'to effect the abolition of 
^Life, Vol. I, p. 280. 



94 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISOlSr 

slavery iu the United States/' and measures were 
at ouce started to disseminate its purposes by means 
of agents. First the Liberator and then the Aboli- 
tionisty a paper conducted by Alonzo Lewis, Joshua 
Coffin and Garrison, were the official organs. Well 
on in the year 1832 began a work which provided 
Garrison for a time with tlie semblance of a liveli- 
hood. He was made agent of the society for the 
puri)Ose of '' touring " various parts of Xew England 
to spread the abolition gospel, at a salary which 
amounted to a trifle over a dollar a day. 

Eadical enough by this time on most questions, 
he was still conservative in a few. As he traveled 
about on his mission, he was imi)ressed, as men 
still are, with the favorable results of that artificial 
arrangement known as the protective system, which 
he found to be ^' the life-blood of the nation." In 
those days it ran somewhat less turbidly than at a 
later period, and such excesses as it held within itself 
as a system were not discernible to the young reformer. 
This was one of his conservatisms. Ultimately he be- 
came a free trader on humanitarian grounds. Even 
to the end of his life he remained a Eepublican in 
politics, although the revolt against this party had 
gained much strength before he died. A curious 
preference for a few established things and for some 
of the old paths marks him as more cautious than 
his extremist contemporary, Wendell Phillips. 

In the year 1832, Garrison published his first 
really important writing, Thoughts on African Colo- 
nization. Pamphlet though it was, it was a thorough 
piece of work, deliberately aimed at the impair- 



EDITOIi AND PAMPHLETEEE 95 

rnent of the American Colonization Society. He 
did not rely, for argument, on rhetoric or his own 
heated zeal, but on a careful study of the published 
utterances and records of this society. It was a re- 
markably incisive examination, fully equal in abil- 
ity and grasp to what might have been expected 
from a far more learned and better trained man. It 
would be no exaggeration to say that there were at 
that time in the country few college-bred men who 
could have equaled this effort in acumen, the use 
of facts, or the assemblage of arguments. Certainly 
no adequate answer was ever made to this danger- 
ous assault on the Colonization Society, a well rec- 
ognized institution in American life, cherished by 
the benevolent and well-meaning, because such a 
society seemed an easy, if a remote and partial, so- 
lution of an evil which was beginning to make the 
comfortable somewhat uneasy, and the morally half- 
asleep rub their eyes. Into the merits and demerits 
of colonization, and of the society, which still has a 
real if not vigorous existence, it is not necessary to 
enter here. So great an authority as Daniel Web- 
ster said in 1822, in answer to Judge Story's advo- 
cacy of colonization, that ' ' it was a scheme of slave- 
holders to get rid of free negroes." ^ That was not 
the whole story then or now, but neither the scheme 
nor the organization was satisfactory to Garrison, 
and after his wont he proceeded to assail them as 
inimical to a higher and better plan. His great ob- 
jection to the society was that it did not attack sla- 
very .as a personal sin, but only as a harmful and 

» Sears, Wendell Phillips, p. 32. 



96 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKEISON 

regrettable iDstitutiou, and that it was disposed to 
let both well enough and the wholly bad alone — the 
wholly bad being the recognition of slaves as proj)- 
erty. With such laissez-faire methods he could 
have nothing to do, although it is noticeable that 
even he did not propose to extend the suffrage or 
the burden of office-holding immediately to those 
who might be released from bondage. Above all 
things, he announced that the means taken to in- 
sure freedom should be moral, by which he meant 
pacific. From this position he really never wavered. 
Against this humble David, armed with such peb- 
bles as the truth furnished him, was arrayed the 
most reputable portion of American society — divines, 
educators, publicists, men of established position and 
accustomed to respect. Among these men was Ger- 
rit Smith, soon to feel the smiting fire of this ar- 
raignment of his honest convictions. 

The pamphlet was deadly and it did its work, 
just how or in what extent of time it is not possible 
to determine. As a wound will fester more quickly 
in unclean than in clean flesh, so did this now well- 
nigh unreadable pamphlet i:)roduce septic condi- 
tions in a society about which theie was already 
much uneasiness. El izur Wright, Jr., enumerates' 
a few of the men who came away from the Coloniza- 
tion Society at about this time. Their names, 
worthy of mention here, for they were important in 
those days and later, are as follows : Artlnir and 
Lewis Tappau, Alvan Stewart, Gerrit Smitli, Gen- 
eral Samuel Fessonden, Theodore D. Weld, K. P. 

^ Life, Vol. I, p. 299. 



EDITOE AND PAMPHLETEER 97 

Rogers, Charles B. Storrs, President of Western 
Reserve College ; Beriali GreeD, William Goodell, 
Joshua Leavitt, and Amos A. Phelps. Even such 
men as Stephen Longfellow, the poet's father, and 
Simon Greenleaf, the jurist, were favorably moved 
by the moral weight of Garrison's writing. 

In spite of the enlargement of the Liberator dur- 
ing the year, there is evidence late in 1832, that the 
paper was in difficulty, on account of "the em- 
barrassment into which the publication of our 
Thoughts has unavoidably plunged us" ; and this, 
in spite of the fact as stated in the Life^ 
that it was "owing exclusively to the liberality of 
Isaac Winslow, of Portland," that Mr. Garrison 
was able to publish his pamphlet. Notwithstand- 
ing his success as a pamphleteer, therefore, the year 
which had thus far marked the farthest advance 
seems to have closed rather darkly for the editor. 

1 Vol. I, p. 300 n. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE MOVEMENT MADE NATIONAL 

By the time he was twenty-five years old, Garri- 
son had managed to get himself into jail, had been 
connected with several newspapers and had at last 
established one that was to endure thirty -five years ; 
he had written a most important and influential 
pamphlet, had made many telling addresses, and 
had become mainly responsible for the formation of 
au anti-slavery society out of which were to grow 
yet larger things. The leaven he used was begin- 
ning to work, and in the end it leavened the whole 
mass — not, however, without admixture with other 
quickening elements, the use of which he disdained. 
Among these were the ballot, political machinery, 
the social power of the church, and the inherent re- 
spect of American citizens for a Constitution of 
their own making. His greatest contribution to the 
national life was his discovery, as we may properly 
call it, of the tremendous force of unremitting per- 
sonal agitation. It would be fair to call him the 
first American agitator since the time immediately 
preceding the Revolution, when the James Otises 
and the Samuel Adamses stopped discussing only be- 
cause argument had given way to fighting. But up 
to the year 1833, Garrison's efforts were fermenta- 
tive in character, and did not partake of the nature 



THE MOVEMEI^^T MADE NATIONAL 99 

of explosives. To be sure, he had sorely irritated 
the South, as even the least salt will irritate an ill 
couditiou of the flesh, and he was beginning to dis- 
please a considerable number of highly respectable 
persons in the North, who were coming to regard 
him as a nuisance if not already a menace. Still 
his words as yet were only words, however sharp - 
tipped with irritants for sluggish moral circulation ; 
acts traceable to these exacerbating speeches and 
editorials there were none as yet of real significance. 
But in this year 1833 arose a tempest consider- 
ably larger than that teapot of a Connecticut village 
in which it was brewed. The story must be briefly 
told, and told only because it was Garrison's advice 
which really made the whole affair possible. Great 
movements — and anti-slavery was a great movement 
— do not originate under one hat, and it is altogether 
possible that Miss Prudence Crandall, principal of 
a "female" boarding-school in Canterbury , Conn., 
would have been aroused by the iniquities of human 
slavery, had no such person as William Lloyd Gar- 
rison ever existed. But the plain truth is that, 
while comfortably and profitably conducting her 
girls' school, she was led to read the Liberator^ 
copies of which were loaned to her by a colored 
girl, who "helped" in Miss Crandall's home. 
Brought up in the Society of Friends, she had early 
learned that slavery was an evil thing, and her 
sympathies for a debased race were easily aroused 
by the exciting pages of Garrison's jiaper. She 
took into her school a young colored woman, a 
friend of the domestic before mentioned, and from 



100 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

that moment there was no peace for Miss Orandall 
or her prosjjerous school. Before she had done 
with Canterbury, the lady had been insulted in 
about every conceivable way, short of violence to 
her person. She was jailed, medical attendance was 
denied her, ordure was thrown into her well and her 
house was assaulted and ''finally set on fire," ^ — all 
because she decided, on account of the hubbub over 
the entrance of the colored girl into the school, to 
change her establishment into a high school for 
'' young colored ladies and misses." The battle of 
the whole town against one woman — and incidentally 
against her inflexible jpriuciples — was waged for two 
years, and at the end of that time the usual thing 
happened : the idealist was beaten ; only her ulti- 
mately successful ideals remained. She was to fall 
a victim to the mass play of cowardice — a boycott. 

In the October following his return fjom Europe 
in 1833, Garrison went to see Miss Crandall and her 
curious collection of relics of the warfare, — a war- 
fare as ridiculous as it was offensive, against a woman 
in the exercise of her personal rights under the Con- 
stitution of the country for which these brave war- 
riors professed to care so much. Going on to 
Brooklyn, Conn., he was served at the house of 
George Benson, his future father-in-law, with five 
indictments for libel against as many of the leading- 
persecutors of Miss Crandall' 8 school. These suits 
were all withdrawn somewhat over a year later, al- 
though Garrison had requested to have them con- 
tinued during tlie year, and in the Liheraior had 

> Life, Vol. I, p. 321. 



THE M0VEME:^T made national 101 

abated none of his violent expressions against the 
plaintiffs, the chief offender of whom was one 
Andrew T. Judson. Garrison had practically no 
part to wage in this strange outbreak in an other- 
wise decent New England community, which for a 
time laid aside its garments of respectability and re- 
vealed the inextinguishable, naked savage beneath. 
But the significant thing is that it was he whom Miss 
Crandall sought for advice about changing (literally) 
the complexion of her school. What that advice was 
it is easy to guess ; it is also certain that she followed 
Garrison's counsel and that she advertised her new 
venture in the Liberator.^ As long as Garrison in- 
furiated a far-distant portion of the country by his 
words, or empurpled the visages of reputable Bos- 
tonians by his harangues, he was harmless enough 
— as people may have thought ; but when his advice, 
directly given and quickly acted upon, threw a 
peaceable Northern village into a state of anarchy, 
it is quite plain — plainer than could have appeared 
at the time — that Garrison was something more than 
a loud talker and an indiscreet writer. He was get- 
ting to be dynamic — soon he was accounted to be suf- 
ficiently dangerous to excite anarchic conditions 
nearer home than Canterbury, Conn. But he was to 
see a little of the world and to spread his gospel far 
afield before this happened. 

Notwithstanding the failure to get a footing in 

New Haven for the industrial college for students of 

color, talk about a manual labor school was still 

going on in Philadelphia and Boston. It was felt 

' See issue for March 2, 1833. 



102 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON 

that an active effort to raise money abroad, and par- 
ticularly in Great Britain, was desirable, and to this 
end, early in the year 1833, it was voted by the Kew 
England Society to send Garrison to England as 
an agent to collect funds, as soon as means could 
be provided for the purpose. Not only was he to 
promote the interests of the Manual Labor School 
for Colored Youth, but if possible, he was to head 
off Elliott Cresson, delegated agent of the American 
Colonization Society, whose propaganda were making 
a rapid advance not only among English coloniza- 
tionists, but also among those in favor, theoretically 
at least, of the abolition of slavery. Cresson had 
approached William Wilberforce, father of the 
movement for the emancipation of the British "West 
Indian slaves with indifferent success, but had 
managed to extract from Thomas Clarkson a state- 
ment favoring the emancipation of all slaves in the 
United States, and the sending of them to Africa as 
a means of stopping the slave-trade and advancing 
civilization in that country. Tliis Clarkson mani- 
festo Cresson seems to have so garbled that, as it 
was sent forth in print, it favored the promotion of 
"voluntary emigration to Africa of the colored 
population of the United States," a great distinc- 
tion and a great difference. Garrison's hands were 
now seldom empty of wrathful vials which he might 
pour on the enemies of his cause— enemies in the 
personal sense he disclaimed ever having had— but 
for the head of Elliott Cresson, no vial seemed too 
offensive. Whether Cresson was the hypocritical 
and unscrupulous person he was said to be by Gar- 



THE MOVEMENT MADE NATIONAL 103 

risoD, and believed to be by the latter' s filial biog- 
graphers, it is impossible to say. But he was mak- 
ing headway iu England even against James Cropper 
and Charles Stuart, who were apparently the most 
forceful English advocates of the abolition cause ; 
and he was representative of i^rinciples which Gar- 
rison had come within the past two or three years 
to abhor. Given a born fighter, a definite oppo- 
nent, and an objective point toward which both were 
pressing hard, and we need not inquire too minutely 
into the refinements of such a controversy. The 
rules of the ring are not always observed when 
tongues, not fists, are the weapons. It is not neces- 
sary to believe that Cresson was an infamous char- 
acter to understand why he was assailed by Garrison 
— he stood squarely in the path of a man who be- 
lieved that himself and all his works were impeccably 
on the side of right. 

Money came in from New York, Philadelphia, 
Boston, Providence and other places until over six 
hundred dollars were subscribed for the trip. It 
should be remembered that at this period the free 
colored peoi^le were doing their share not only in 
showing enthusiasm for the cause of their race, but 
in aiding this cause by gifts of money and by active 
work. The impression is still strong that the negro 
himself has been comparatively indifferent to the 
earlier efforts made for his deliverance from the 
hardest bondage known to man. That he was for 
the most part helpless from necessity is true, but, 
at the time of which we are writing, it is probably 
also true that the numbei' of morally alert colored 



104 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

or partly colored persons was creditably large. The 
saving remnant in any age prepared to suiter per- 
sonally ibr the sake of an imijersonal or unj)rofitable 
cause is always lamentably small, and there is no 
reason to supx30se that the negro, at the dawn of his 
deliverance in the thirties, was sleeping more 
soundly at his post than is the wont of common 
men everywhere and at all times. 

Garrison left the Liberator to the editorial charge 
of Oliver Johnson, one of the most uncompromising 
of the early Abolitionists, who survived his chief 
and wrote a biography of him necessary to be read 
by all who would understand the inner life of this 
movement. It was natural to one of Garrison's 
temperament that he should make his departure an 
occasion for speaking his mind fully on the subject 
closest to his heart. To a gathering of colored 
people in the little church underneath which was 
born the New England Society, he said, in dwelling 
on the power of slavery as a system; ''I will not 
waste my strength in foolishly endeavoring to beat 
down the great Bastille with a feather. ... I 
am for digging under the foundations, and spring- 
ing a mine that shall not leave one stone upon 
another. '^ If his methods were to be loacific and 
non-resistant, certainly he chose his similes and 
metaphors from the enginery of actual war. It is a 
mystery liow he could have believed that human 
nature, always impressionable, always yielding at 
its weakest point, could interpret his ferocious 
eloquence in terms of an unwarlike policy. 

Late in April he addressed an audience in Phila- 



THE MOVEMENT MADE NATIONAL 105 

delpliia, but had occasiou to note that " the colored 
Philadelphiaus, as a body, do not eviuce that in- 
terest and warmth of attachment which characterize 
my Boston friends — nor is it to be expected, as I 
have associated with scarce a dozen of their num- 
ber." Toward the end of the month Garrison and 
his friends evidently believed that he was '^watched 
and hunted" with a view to getting bodily posses- 
sion of him by legal writs, and spiriting him away 
to Georgia or elsewhere in the South. No evidence 
is offered to show that these suspicions had any 
basis of fact to sustain them, but, in order to be 
sure, he was kept ''under lock and key" in an 
upper room of the house of a friend of Arthur 
Tappan, until he sailed from New York on May 2, 
1833. He went forth to raise fifty thousand dollars 
for the manual school, to circumvent the activities 
of the agent Cresson, and, hardest of all, to face 
social conditions of which he knew absolutely 
nothing except that, judged by the world's stand- 
ards, they were very different from those from 
which he took his being and in which he still 
moved. Up to that time, traveled Americans — if 
we except Benjamin Franklin, whose circumstances 
so much resemble those of Garrison — were for the 
most part sons of gentlemen, university-bred, and 
armed with helpful credentials and ample letters 
of credit. Garrison was singularly devoid of the 
equipment of an over-sea concjueror in the social or 
the political arena. 

During his brief and well-spent absence, he was a 
participant as well as a spectator in important hap- 



106 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISOK 

peninga. He was able to add to liis list of helpful 
friends the names of James Cropper, Thomas Fowell 
Buxton, Zachary Macaulay, father of a yet greater 
son ; Samuel Gurney, Charles Stuart, the Eev. 
Thomas Price, Daniel O'ConnellJ and George 
Thompson. In June he was received by William 
Wilberforce, then within a few weeks of his death, 
which took place three days after the second read- 
ing of the House of Commons Bill emancipating the 
West Indian slaves. In two interviews with the 
father of British emancipation, Garrison accom- 
plished all that was necessary to turn the tide 
against Cresson. A protest signed by Wilberforce 
within about ten days of his death, and by eleven 
other leading Abolitionists, called off further aid 
and comfort on British soil to the American Col- 
onization Society, and it is reasonable to suppose 
that Garrison's presence in England had much to 
do with this result. In an unusually sour diatribe 
against Garrison and his biographers, Leonard 
Woolsey Bacon, whose hostility has been mentioned 
elsewhere, makes light of the American agitator's 
approbation of Buxton, who was Wilberforce' s suc- 
cessor in Parliament. Buxton was a brewer, and 
Garrison had already exi^ressed himself fully in re- 
gard to all who manufactured and sold what he 
believed to be liquid damnation, even though it was 
as innocent a beverage as the honest ale brewed by 
Truman, Hanbury, Buxton and Company. Mr. 
Bacon found evidence of hypocrisy in Garrison's 
thus meeting in friendly spirit with an English 
gentleman engaged in a warfare against a common 



THE MOVEMENT MADE NATIONAL 107 

foe. Many of the charges agaiust Garrison can be 
shown to be as senseless as this — a large part of 
them unimportant even when true. That Garrison 
cannot be accused of a snobbish desire to stand well 
with important men in England is amjily proved by 
his twice subjecting himself, for the sake of his 
cause, to a snub from a royal personage whom he 
unfortunately addressed as "His Grace," the Duke 
of Sussex. A less ingenuous man than Garrison 
would have been content with one neglect from a 
royal highness. Possibly the duke thought, as 
Buxton did, before he saw his American visitoi*, 
that William Lloyd Garrison was a black man. 

It soon became evident, on account of the 
agitation of West Indian affairs, that the time was 
not ripe to seek English aid for the manual 
labor school. But Mr. Cresson, already strong in 
the confidence of many English Quakers, was to be 
circumvented, if it were a possible thing. He was 
accordingly invited to a joint debate with Garrison, 
but found a way to decline it. Garrison there- 
fore addressed a meeting at Price's Wesleyan 
Chapel, and devoted himself to criticizing the 
policies of the Colonization Society. Cressou was 
present, but made no rejoinder, and failed to appear 
at a meeting held next evening, when Cropper was 
able to announce Wilberforce's regret that 'Mie 
was ever led to say anything in approbation of the 
Colonization Society." This was before Garrison's 
meeting with Wilberforce, and his chief influence 
with the latter was in connection with the signing 
of the ''Protest" already referred to. Later, to 



108 WILLIAM LLOYD G ARKISON 

induce Cresson to prove his various assertions, 
Garrison inserted a challenge, for which he paid 
more than thirty dollars, in the London Times. 
After he had made many new friends, and giveu 
publicity and even popularity to the American 
anti-slavery cause, though attacking with question- 
able discretion the shortcomings of his native 
country, he found reason to believe that African 
colonization had received a serious setback in 
England, and therefore saw no occasion for longer 
remaining away from his chosen work at home. It 
was his good fortune to have Daniel O'Connell give 
support, with all that great Irishman's eloquence 
and generous fervor, to his own claim for Biitish 
sympathy. It was also his privilege to walk as 
a mourner in the procession which escorted the 
remains of William Wilberforce to their resting- 
place in Westminster Abbey. His visit had been 
eventful and profitable, and it was a good time for 
departure, when welcome for him and what he 
stood for was still warm. 

This first journey of Garrison to England lasted 
a few days short of five months ; and he was back 
in New York in season to attend, on October 2d, 
as a spectator, a meeting called to form the Kew 
York City Anti-Slavery Society. Clinton Hall 
was closed against this meeting, and it was held 
in the Rev. Charles G. Finney's chapel in Chatham 
Street, just long enough to adopt a constitution 
before the incursion of a mob of violent sympa- 
thizers with the South, who had auspiciously held 
a previous meeting in Tammany Hall. When 



THE M0VEME:N"T made national 109 

Garrison returned to Boston, after this experience 
with the dangers of free speech in New York, he 
found that news of his strictures on American insti- 
tutions had preceded his arrival. A crowd, bent 
on mischief and incited by a '* dodger'^ from the 
North End, the usual seat of popular inflammation 
in Boston, as the Bowery was later in New York, 
gathei-ed, on the evening of October 7th, in front 
of the office of his paper, but melted away without 
applying the moral therapeutics dear to mobs. 
Feeling, liowever, that some explanation of his 
uttei'ances was due even to an unreasonable crowd, 
Garrison, without the vestige of an apologetic line, 
showed that, while he loved his country and did 
not fail to praise it, he did not hesitate to brand it 
**as hypocritical and tyrannical in its treatment 
of the people of color, whether bond or free." ' 
Later he printed in the Liberator" what he had 
really said in Exeter Hall, reported at an expense 
to him of eighty dollars. It was a manly and an 
unequivocal stand, in which he warned the 
** enemies of freedom" that he was '' storm-proof." 
In an era which fostered Colonel Diver and Mr. 
Jefferson Brick, it is not altogether surprising, 
however disagreeable, to find that Garrison, who 
was anything but a rowdy, though hardly a pat- 
tern "gentleman" of the silver-top variety, felt 
the need, in his defense, of calling General Webb, 
of the New York Courier and Enquirer, a '^ cow- 
ardly ruffian," and Colonel Stone, of the Commercial 
Advertiser, a ** miserable liar and murderous hypo- 
1 Life, Vol. I, p. 387. ' Vol. Ill, p. 179. 



110 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

crite'' ; but such were the warm journalistic rnau- 
ners of a time wheu the people of this country were 
developing into a sharp self-consciousness and a 
rather loose-tongued way of differing one with 
another. It was lamentably bad taste, as we now 
think, but no one can fail to understand the 
meaning of the oracular editorials of those days. If 
they were not academic, neither were they Delj^hic. 
In spite of the fact that the second report of 
the New England Society was able to announce 
the formation of forty anti-slavery organizations 
distributed throughout the Xorth, and in spite of the 
fact that Garrison's name was fast growing at home 
and in England, the real work done thus far was 
mostly personal and local. A national society, with 
its greater possibilities of every sort, was needed. 
The first call for such an organization was issued 
on October 20, 1833, by Arthur Tappan, Joshua 
Leavitt, and Elizur Wright, Jr. — all of that city 
anti-slavery meeting so stormily born in the Chat- 
ham Street chapel in New Yoik only three weeks 
earlier. On December 4th fifty or sixty delegates, 
only two or three of whom were colored, assembled 
in Adelphi Hall, Philadelphia. Many of these 
delegates were Quakei's, and there were also several 
women (chief among them Lucretia Mott) who 
took part in the discussions but who were not 
asked to sign the Declaration of Sentiments, though 
formally thanked by the male delegates for the 
interest taken by them in the proceedings. The 
meetings were guarded by the police, but two 
members of the Colonization Society, a large 



THE M0VEME:N"T made national 111 

number of Southern medical students ^ and others 
were made welcome in the spectators' seats. The 
Eev. Beriah Green, a man of genuine ability and 
force of character and a professor in Western Ee- 
serve College, was chosen president, and Lewis 
Tappan and John G. Whittier, who had journeyed 
from Boston with Garrison, were made secretaries. 
There were present at this convention men after- 
ward of signal importance in the anti-slavery 
annals, such as Samuel J. May, E. L. Capron, the 
two Winslows, Nathan and Isaac, from Maine ; 
Arnold Buffam, Thomas Shipley, Joshua Coffin, 
Amos A. Phelps, William Goodell, Eobert Purvis, 
James M. McKim, and others who well deserve 
mention. 

Thus far, Mr. Garrison, the protagonist of the 
convention, seems to have played a quiet part, but 
he was presently appointed on a committee of ten to 
draw up a declaration of principles. This commit- 
tee selected a sub -committee, consisting of Garrison, 
Whittier and May, which was to report the next 
morning to their associates. This sub-committee 
entrusted the actual building of the paper to Garri- 
son, their '^ coryphaeus," and, according to Samuel 
J. May's interesting narrative,^ left him at ten 
o'clock at night to find him at eight the next morn- 
ing just ending his task. It was fitting that this 
important document, conceived and endorsed in all 
seriousness by a most earnest body, should have 
been actually composed in the home of a colored 

' Life, Vol. I, p. 398. 

^ May's Eecollections, p. 86. 



112 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREliSON 

womau, who was a delegate. The whole committee 
found little to erase or amend, although they de- 
cided to omit au attack u^^ou the Colonization So- 
ciety as conflicting with the directness and integrity 
of the general text. May admits that the commit- 
tee *' writhed somewhat" under the severity of Gar- 
rison's arraignments, but gives him credit for falling 
in gracefully with the opinions of his associates on 
the ground that it was their report, not his. 

While the convention was waiting for the commit- 
tee to submit its draft, there took place one of those 
incidents so dear to the Abolitionist heart, so little 
in accoid with the temper of later days. Various 
speakers, and esi^ecially Lewis Tajjpan, with over- 
flowing souls, beguiled the hours, in part, by loud 
praises of Mr. Garrison. Whittier read a poem ad- 
dressed to his friend, while Tappan, among other 
extravagances, quoted the words of a clergyman 
that ^'a more discreet, humble and faithful Chris- 
tian" he never had seen. As soon as he found a 
suitable opportunity, Mr. Garrison, who was by no 
means devoid of the human fondness for apj>roba- 
tion, had the good sense to write that, ''the pane- 
gyric of our friends is incomj^arably more afllicting 
to us than the measureless defamation of our ene- 
mies." ^ The merit of this avowal should, however, 
be somewhat qualified by a recognition of the fact 
that opposition and detraction seemed to act 
as a wholesome stimulus to his faculties and his 
energy. 

The declaration, when ready, was debated and 

^Liberator, Vol. Ill, p. 202. 



THE MOA^EMENT MADE NATIONAL 113 

•weighed with all gravity, but the text was accepted 
with few changes and signed by sixty -three dele- 
gates. 

Beyond doubt, the men and women who attended 
this convention felt that they were concerned in 
framing a paper likely to have as far-reaching con- 
sequences as had that other declaration i)ut forth in 
the same city fifty- seven years earlier. The possible 
failure of their efforts would not have constituted 
treason, but there was good reason to anticipate 
danger and perhaps loss of life in the time to come. 
The sweet possibilities of martyrdom were ever be- 
fore the devotees, and they all had a courage never 
to be questioned — least of all in the framer of the 
declaration. This now famous manifesto rejected 
^^ the use of all carnal weai)ons for deliverance from 
bondage," and relied only upon ^' the opposition of 
moral purity to moral corruption — the destruction 
of error by the potency of truth — the overthrow of 
prejudice by the power of love — and the abolition 
of slavery by the spirit of repentance." Could they 
who gave these bravely innocent words life have 
possibly foreseen that, as years w^ent by, their own 
vituperation and unchecked passion for abuse 
would contribute largely to throwing the slavehold- 
ing states into a condition of fury, which robbed 
them of prudence, self-control, foresight as to the 
probable issue of secession ? Had they been able to 
prophesy the crisis only a generation ahead of these 
specific utterances, and to foresee the subsequent 
violence of their attacks, would they have paused 
in their self-appointed task ? Probably not ; even 



114 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

as it was, before long some of them began to have 
misgivings, and upon these faltering ones Garrison 
and his immediate followers heaped abuse almost as 
violent as upon slavery itself. 

Naturally the declaration opposed giving compen- 
sation to slaveholders who should emancipate their 
slaves ; if any were given, it should go to the slaves 
and not to their masters — a jjroposal as logical as it 
was irritating. The declaration went on shrewdly 
to concede the right of each sovereign stale to ^' leg- 
islate exclusively on the subject of slavery which is 
tolerated within its limits," but held that Congress 
had the right ' ' to suppress the domestic slave-trade 
between the several states and to abolish slavery in 
those portions of its territory which the Constitu- 
tion has placed under its exclusive jurisdiction.'' 
It omitted to say, however, in what manner Con- 
gress might enforce such restrictive legislation. 
For those who have a fancy for imaginative history 
it would be a curious task to portray the working of 
an interstate commerce act at present in a country 
where slavery and a powerful moral and physical 
opposition to it should still co-exist. 

Closing with uncompromising threats as to the 
means to be employed in making the new organiza- 
tion and its publications effective, even to the point 
of threatening to dispense with the products of slave 
labor, the declaration's final word was a solemn 
pledge to do ''all that in us lies consistently with 
this declaration of our principles, to overthrow the 
most execrable system of slavery that has ever been 
witnessed upon earth . . . come what may to 



THE MOVEMENT MADE NATIONAL 115 

our persons, our interests, or our reputations ; 'Mt 
was then signed on December 6, 1833. The Consti- 
tution followed, in more formal and less exuberant 
lauguage, the general affirmations of the declaration. 
Arthur Tappan, who was not present at the con- 
vention, was elected the first president ; Elizur 
Wright, Jr., secretary of domestic correspondence ; 
Garrison, secretary of foreign correspondence ; 
A. L. Cox, recording secretary ; and William 
Green, Jr., treasurer.' The foreign secretary soon 
resigned, probably not without feelings of mortifica- 
tion, because of certain restrictions imposed upon the 
office. During the thirties he held no important 
position in the society. This secretaryship later was 
filled by the Eev. Samuel Hanson Cox, who ulti- 
mately forsook the ranks of simon-pure Aboli- 
tionism. 

The birth of the American An ti -Slavery Society 
marked the close of the five years since Garrison be- 
gan to advocate "the gradual emancipation of every 
slave in the republic" in the Bennington paper 
established to forward the reelection of the second 
Adams. He himself had changed in those five 
years, and was to change still more radically, but 
he already saw great accomplishments, not the least 
of which was the establishment of an anti-slavery 
literature written with ability and calculated to 
have its effect. The principal work done was the 
acting of individuals on other individuals, and there 
was none of the compulsive force of organization 
acting on the general mass. The formation of the 
1 Life, Vol. I, p. 415. 



116 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

American Anti -Slavery Society introduced new 
elements, and tended to nationalize a still compact 
movement. 

• On bis way to attend the Philadelphia conven- 
tion, Garrison v»^rote to his friend George W. Ben- 
son of Providence that, among the charms at the 
home of the latter's father in Brooklyn, Conn., 
''the soft blue eyes and pleasaut countenance of 
Miss Ellen are by no means impotent or unattract- 
ive." Garrison was fond of the society of women ; 
he was perhaps a little sentimental and effusive in 
their presence and in correspondence with them. 
He had an attractive and a virile personality, and 
probably gave as much satisfaction as he took from 
his many friends of the other sex. In a high- 
minded and frank way he liked women. There is 
no occasion here to enlarge upon his brief court- 
ship, or the worldly imprudence of marrying at a 
time when his fortunes, if such a word can be used, 
were at lowest ebb. His excuse was the frequent 
excuse of youth : a pure-minded love, and a willing- 
ness to work harder for two than for one. "Matri- 
mony," he wrote to his wife's brother, '' instead of 
hindering, rather advances my labors." It is suf- 
ficient to say that early in April, 1833, when Gar- 
rison, on his way to England, took leave of his 
colored friends in the African Church in Providence, 
Miss Helen Benson, daughter of George and sister of 
Henry E. and George \Y. Benson, saw Garrison for 
the first time. In January of 1834 he definitely be- 
gan his courtship and on September 4th of this year 
the wedding took place, the young couple being 



( 

THE MOVEMENT MADE NATIONAL 117 

married at Miss Benson's home by the Eev. 
Samuel J. May. The new home was in Eoxbury, 
Mass., then a town separate from Boston, of which 
it is now a part, and was joyously named *' Free- 
dom's Cottage" ; here also lived Knapp, Garrison's 
partner. Miss Benson, cozily called ^' Peace and 
Plenty " by her atfectionate family, was a very sane 
and wholesome woman, as was Garrison's own 
mother, but she had, as was suitable, some rebellious 
blood in her veins. Her father, who had retired on 
a moderate competence gained as a merchant in 
Providence, had been long interested in anti-slavery 
in its earlier and less definite days. He had been 
an incorporator of one of the Abolition societies, 
and at the time of his daughter's marriage was 
President of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. 
A remote strain of protest against social oppression 
came down in the young wife from the Eev. 
Obadiah Holmes, who had been ^ ' publicly whipped 
in Boston, 1651, for holding service at the bedside of 
an invalid brother Baptist." ^ Mr. Benson himself, 
once a Baptist, had joined the Society of Friends, 
that potent body of religious opposition to slavery 
in the abstract from earliest days. William Lloyd 
Garrison might have looked in vain for a sweeter 
woman or a better helpmate to stand by him in the 
arduous years to come. 

Even before he was thus happily if rashly mar- 
ried, he found himself in straits financially. The 
Liberator had been failing to reach its subscribers 
with due regularity. The efforts to make a canvass 

» life, Vol. I, p. 426 n, 



118 WILI>1AM LLOYD GAREISON 

for subscriptions, on the part of Joshua Coffin, who 
had more zeal than efficiency, did not succeed in 
bettering conditions. Garrison was on the point of 
demanding a fixed salary of one thousand dollars, 
now made necessary through the changed circum- 
stances of his life. He was even willing to take 
eight hundred dollars at first, though he could have 
secured the larger sum bj^ becoming general agent 
of the new American Anti-Slavery Society. The 
sum of two thousand dollars was still owing the 
publishers of the Liberator on the first three vol- 
umes ; the weekly edition numbered two thousand 
three hundred copies, of which four hundred w^ent 
to Philadelphia, three hundred to K"ew York, and 
two hundred to Boston. The exchange list was 
about one hundred and fifty copies. Three-quar- 
ters of the subscribers were colored people and to 
these mainly Garrison in his paper addressed in 
capital letters the question, so vital to their race, 
''Shall the Liberator die 7'^ A month following 
his marriage the Liherator went to a new office on 
Cornhill ; and a little later Garrison was making 
strenuous efforts to lift the burdens of the paper and 
his own, while his friends were busy devising plans 
to help him. In the early part of January, 1835, 
he wrote to George Benson ^ that he "went home to 
write his valedictory, and to adv^ertise the world of 
the downfall of the Ijiberator.''^ It had recently 
been put out at irregular intervals, always a most 
threatening sign in any periodical publication, and 
was reeling like a ship about to capsize. In this 

» Life, Vol. I, p. 468. 



THE MOVEMENT MADE NATIONAL 119 

precarious condition it is necessary to leave the 
paper for a while, saying only that it continued to 
exist, if not to thrive, until the editor, after hav- 
ing completed his task, saw fit to end the unbroken 
series. 

Frank as the biographers have been, they do not 
at this point bring out clearly what seems to have 
been the fact, that by this time many Abolitionists 
and anti-slavery advocates were seriously displeased 
with Garrison's severity of language, both spoken 
and written, but probably more with the written, 
because of its enduring sting. His fault lay in ap- 
plying harsh epithets to individuals, rather than to 
men and principles in general. The Garrisons have 
apparently held nothing back, in the way of evi- 
dence, as to the growing displeasure even among 
those still to be accounted friendly ; but they seem 
not to have admitted that the heavy laboring of the 
Liberator may have been due to a practical manifes- 
tation of such displeasure. Even the Rev. Charles 
Follen, professor at Harvard, whose radicalism 
finally cost him dear at that institution, favored less 
unmeasured speech. Lewis Taj^pau did not relish 
the criticisms or the occasion for them, while his 
brother Arthur came within an ace of veering off 
the narrow path, probably, though not certainly, 
from an uneasiness lest Garrison's course should 
have a disintegrating tendency. 

One proposal was made by the Eev. Henry 
Ware, Jr., to curb the wild horses of Mr. Garrison's 
eloquence, by appointing a few gentlemen who 
should vis6 all articles written for the Liberator^ and 



120 Wi;.LIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

tiy to persuade the editor to print nothing ^^ which 
should not have been approved by them.'' Garri- 
son, of all men, could never have been kept in such 
traces. 



CHAPTER V 

A PROVINCIAL MOB 

In the midst of these anxieties, — and they were 
getting to be many for a man still under thirty — a 
fresh trouble appeared in the shape of George 
Thompson, "Reverend" as he was sometimes 
styled. Thompson, who was just six months older 
than Garrison, had made the latter' s acquaintance 
in England and was well informed on conditions in 
this country, but significantly had been careful, 
while on British soil, not to attack our affairs too 
harshly. John Bright many years later (in 1864) 
said that he had always " considered Mr. Thomp- 
son as the real liberator of the slaves in the English 
colonies." ^ He was of fine presence and a natural 
orator, "his action all that Demosthenes could de- 
sire," says Garrison effusively. He was the agent of 
the London Anti-Slavery Society, and by invitation 
of the two leading anti -slavery societies in this coun- 
try, he had come to lecture here. He was i^receded, 
however, by Captain Charles Stuart, a half-pay of- 
ficer retired from the East India service, who had 
exposed the Colonization Society in England, but 
who later became most inimical to Garrison. In 
their friendly years Garrison speaks of Stuart as 
"solemn, pungent, and severe." To Garrison's 
^ London Farewell Soiree to George Thompson. 



132 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

ears, Thompson's name Tvas ^^ as sweet as the tones 
of a flute/' but it was not at all dear to the majority 
of cis- Atlantic ears. His visit was resented as an 
intrusion, on the part of a '' foreigner," in affairs 
peculiarly our own. John Fiske in his essay on 
* ' Andrew Jackson and American Democracy Sev- 
enty Years Ago," has well outlined the dawning 
national sense of self-importance at this period. It 
seemed to him a wholesome sort of provincialism, 
but with many crudities, among them ''swagger 
and tall talk." We could barely tolerate Mrs. 
TroUope and Charles Dickens, the former hostile in 
spirit, the other friendly, because they indicated our 
follies in certain and sometimes shrill tones. Our 
sense of humor managed to save us from mobbing 
our critics, but we were still too young, too raw, to 
endure one who should tell us pointedly of our sins. 
Besides, Mrs. Trollope and Dickens were ''liter- 
ary" and therefore comparatively harmless, but 
George Thompson was by no means harmless. He 
was, of a truth, rather a terrible person, and he 
could not only wound, but rub salt in the raw. 
Even Garrison was not his superior in this respect. 
During the summer there had been some pre- 
liminary acts of violence, mainly in New York. 
The Tappans' private i^roperty in that city had 
been attacked, Miss Crandall's school at Canterbury, 
Conn., suppressed, and there were other outbreaks 
in several Northern states. For these events the 
newspaper press of the day, nearly as offensive as 
much American journalism is at present and far 
more blatant, was in no small part responsible. 



A PEOVINOIAL MOB 123 

The era of good feeling of the previous decade had 
given place to an era of very bad feeling. The 
pacific Monroe and the respectable second Adams 
had made way for the violent Jackson, and the 
thug, not then an object of tender solicitude and 
sociological observation, was finding himself. A 
small epidemic of anarchy, not confined to the 
greater cities, was gathering force. The destruction 
of the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown, Mass., was 
nearly met with a counter-attack on Harvard Col- 
lege — all in the interests of religion as looked at by 
men of limited information and intelligence on two 
opposite sides. Even the usually cautious Col- 
onization Society came in for a share of the 
restrictive policy of the populace in regard to free 
speech, and it is afflicting to read that Garrison did not 
grieve over the sufferings of his adversaries when, in 
several places, they were denied an opportunity for 
meetings. He did, however, have the satisfaction 
of being told by the Eev. John Breckenridge that 
he (Garrison) was ''too debased and degraded in 
community for me, occupying the station that I do, 
to hold a controversy with you." ' This was meat 
and drink to Garrison, and his "mind was very 
tranquil." Nothing in all the annals of the man's 
career was probably so exasperating to foe, and 
possibly to friend, as this tranquillity of mind, 
which ironically held itself above the boiling emo- 
tions of those who combated him with tongue and 
pen, and even, as we shall soon see, with hempen 
rope. The writer of these words remembers when 

^Life, Vol. I, p. 449. 



124 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

a boy, having seen the great emancipator at a 
public meeting in Koxbury, Mass., — his permanent 
home fjom 1604 to his death — seated on the plat- 
form, wearing that strange immobile smile of 
dominance and utter conviction that he was right. 
Such a smile a judge might wear, as, in discharge of 
his clear duty, he draws on the black cap. 

Thompson, turned out of one New York hotel, 
made his way to Roxbury, and presently for the 
time being became Garrison's neighbor. He 
found ready audiences, and even churches were 
opened to him. In several towns he was insulted, 
but in others favorably received. It is not nec- 
essary to know or to rehearse the comings and 
goings of Thompson for some months ; his ar- 
rival was a menace to Garrison himself, and his 
stay here did not allay strong feeling already roused 
among the turbulently inclined. There is nothing 
vital to record, except the always i:>ossible danger 
of bodily harm, until August, 1835, when there was 
a meeting of great respectability in Faneuil Hall, 
Boston, to protest against the growing strength of 
Abolitionism. Theodore Lyman, Jr., was chair- 
man, and the public-spirited Abbott Lawrence was 
a vice-president. The resolutions deplored the 
inimical spirit manifested against the South and 
censured with ^'indignation and disgust the intru- 
sion upon our domestic relations of alien emis- 
saries,'* ^ thereby signalizing Thompson. Early in 
September he was mobbed, or nearly so, at Con- 
cord, N. H., and the disparity between the name 

» Life, Vol. I, p. 495. 



A PKOVmClAL MOB 126 

of this place and the treatment lie received there 
produced in Thompson mixed sentiments of indigna- 
tion and of that abiding humor with which many 
of the leading Abolitionists were mercifully sup- 
plied. Everything was ripening for that outbreak 
of local fury against the two leaders, known in 
anti-slavery annals as the Boston- mob of 1835, 
which the Englishman avoided by an honorable 
and necessary retreat, and out of which Garrison 
escaped, with his life indeed, but with a new sense 
of the responsibility assumed when he deliberately 
fanned the fires of sectional hate. 

Before the story is told, however, it is necessary 
to bring to mind the doings throughout the country 
during parts of the years 1834 and 1835. In the 
former year the trustees of Lane Seminary at Wal- 
nut Hills, Cincinnati, with the consent of Dr. Lyman 
Beecher, then president, virtually suppressed all 
vestige of academic freedom, as we understand the 
phrase, by prohibiting the existence of any anti- 
slavery or colonization society within the institu- 
tion. This action caused the withdrawal of seventy 
or eighty out of over a hundred students, and 
particularly of Theodore D. Weld, the ^' master- 
spirit,^^ as May calls him, who fought for many 
years on the skirmish line of radicalism, and long 
survived his leader Garrison. James Gillespie 
Birney in the same year gave up his allegiance to 
the Colonization Society, a significant act on the part 
of one who had once held slaves. Birney 'slater career 
was consistent and aggressive, but was of the Ohio 
variety of anti-slavery ; this differed so much from 



126 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON 

the more Eastern activities as to deserve considera- 
tion as a separate movement, until the whole North 
began to fuse in a more general and greater heat 
than that ai-oused by any local or personal en- 
deavors, however strenuous they may have been. 
Three notable accessions to the Garrison side are 
also to be recorded : — the enthusiastic N. P. Rogers 
of New Hami^shire ; the Rev. George Barrell Cheever 
of Salem j and by no means least, Francis Jackson, 
a forcible and an earnest character, who a little 
later sheltered Miss Harriet Martineau from pos- 
sible assault, in his own house. Like Samuel E. 
Sewall, Edmund Quincy and Wendell Phillips, 
Jackson had a social strength to which many of 
the fiercer sort of Abolitionists could not well 
pretend. 

To vote or not to vote was already a question 
with Abolitionists. As time went on, adherents of 
the simon-pure doctrine decided with Garrison that 
the exertion of moral and not political influence was 
the only course to follow. The break in the ranks, 
which were in a general sense unimpaired for 
several years, came at last over this matter. If 
both national parties were wrong, or only partly 
right, how was it possible for those who made no 
compromises of conscience to help elect men on 
either side, who, not being for the true cause, were 
against it? The precise attitude of mind on the 
part of the Abolitionists is hard to discover. If 
they would not vote themselves, they had the com- 
forting certainty that others not so fastidious were 
by slow political pressure strengthening the cause. 



A PKOVINCIAL MOB 127 

Perhaps they perceived with an acumen beyond 
any particular outward evidence that, if it takes all 
kinds of people to make a world, it also takes 
several kinds of ethics to get up enough momentum 
to speed a worthy purpose. Garrison, as his sons 
have told,^ put himself, at this time, into the arena 
of politics just once, cast a vote, and then withdrew 
into his own absolutely individualistic courses. He 
opposed the election of Abbott Lawrence to Con- 
gress from the first Massachusetts district, and 
voted for Amasa Walker, an Abolitionist, notwith- 
standing the fact that Lawrence was only non-com- 
mittal, good Whig that he was, and claimed the right 
to go to Washington, bound by no pledges. Of the 
democratic necessity for compromise Garrison seems 
not to have had the faintest comprehension ; yet 
inevitably it came to pass that his own cause was car- 
ried safely over many shoals by the larger currents 
of national activities. It was floated and carried 
forward by the very medium which he affected most 
to despise. He, however, was not blind, and pre- 
dicted that the great question would soon be more 
than an angry discussion, and that the District of 
Columbia would be the first strategic point to be 
gained by one side or the other. 

Early in the year 1835, a flank movement was at- 
tempted by the colonization sentiment, which was 
dying, but dying hard. A number of Congrega- 
tionalist (Trinitarian) clergymen, who did not like 
the pace at which Garrison was traveling, although 
he had not as yet made the least break with the 

» Life, Vol. I, p. 455. 



128 AVILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON 

formal religion which he still professed, undertook 
to start the American Union for the Belief and Im- 
provemeut of the Colored Eace. Its career was as 
brief as its title was long, but Arthur Tappan was 
seduced into a temi)orary interest in the i)roject. 
His answer to the objections of his friends to this 
step was shortly after to subscribe five thousand dol- 
lars to the American Anti- Slavery Society. The 
new Union, started to collect statistics on the status 
of the negro, did not oiDenly seek to antagonize any- 
thiug from slavery to anti- slavery and the interven- 
ing territory of varying opinion. It was not an 
era, apparently, iu which to foster successfully 
a popular sentiment for carefully collected and 
digested facts, and therefore by the end of a year 
and a half the American Union resembled Pliable in 
Pilgrim'' s Progress, whom Christian ''saw no more. '^ 
Seeming to triumph over such preliminary efforts 
to make a diversion against his own methods, Garri- 
son was nevertheless fast approaching a point in his 
career where the thin oppositions were to become 
formidable. The church — and by this is meant the 
whole body of organized religion, — was to be com- 
pelled, by force of events, to take sides. While it 
is perfectly true that from the church are continu- 
ally issuing men and women who are willing to put 
off the old man and put on the new, — it is even 
more true that the church, in and by itself, as a 
composite whole, is conservative and never leads. 
If it advances, it moves one foot slowly and with 
much caution. If the ground bears, it will draw up 
the other foot, and a new position is then taken, in 



A PEOVINCIAL MOB 129 

a place perhaps already abandoned by the ever- 
advancing little band of those uncomfortable 
idealists, called reformers. Now the church was 
by no means ready to follow William Lloyd Garri- 
son in his wholesale condemnation of those fellow 
Christians who were unfortunate enough to hold, as 
under a sort of trust, property in human beings. 
According to the religious conception of the day, 
the Saviour of mankind was not abusive or violent, 
in spite of the incidents of the money-changers and 
the Pharisees, and it was thought not right that any 
professed follower of Christ should be condemnatory 
after a fashion for which his Master had set no prec- 
edent. He should the rather make a careful dis- 
tinction between the things that are Caesar^ s and 
those that are God's. This was reason enough for 
discovering sad differences between Garrison's 
methods and Christian practice. It is not neces- 
sary at this day to inquire diligently whether the 
orthodox side brought worldly prudence to its sup- 
port. Probably it did— certainly it did, according 
lo the extremists. And the fact remains that, ac- 
cording to Christian doctrine as commonly inter- 
preted. Garrison and his followers were brawlers 
and disturbers of that heavenly peace wherein 
religious beliefs do most comfortably thrive. As a 
sequence to the growing opposition to such icono- 
clasm, various religious bodies began to set their 
faces against the extension of anti-slavery propa- 
gandism as carried on up to about the year 1 835. 
Conferences, Synods, Presbyteries of the several 
sects began to grow cold toward Garrisonian Aboli- 



130 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

tionism. Bible and tract societies became suddenly 
willing, on grounds of expediency, not to preach the 
Gospel to every creature, if, by so doing, irritation 
and alarm were to be spread throughout the South, 
where as yet no schism threatened to divide the two 
sections of the country, so far as religious organiza- 
tion and cohesion were concerned. The fixity of 
Garrison's faith, hitherto strong, was beginning to 
waver, especially when he perceived that his own 
sect like the others was moved by policy, not con- 
viction. There now begins to appear, in Garrison's 
opinions, a change toward a rigid formalism in 
religious matters, which culminated in a final rejec- 
tion of nearly all the observances once found neces- 
sary to his spiritual well-being. With the approach 
of Thanksgiving Day of this year (1835) he writes to 
Greorge Benson that he is growing * ^ more and more 
hostile to outward forms and ceremonies and observ- 
ances as a religious duty." It was the first indica- 
tion of an attitude which was to set him at odds 
with influential opponents of slavery, and ulti- 
mately to weaken his position in some important 
respects. 

In midsummer there was held in New York a 
meeting strongly Southern in complexion, pri- 
marily to devise means to head off the now dreaded 
anti-slavery agitation and the '^fanatics" like 
Garrison and the Tappans, whose effigies were 
burned in Charleston, S. C, by an infuriated mob, 
driven to desperation by the discovery of inflam- 
mable material sent to that city thi'ough the agency 
of the unceasingly busy American Anti-Slavery 



A PEOVINCIAL MOB 131 

Society. The North was frankly appealed to by 
several of the slaveholding states to do all in its 
power to stay this abolition frenzy, and there was 
put forward the subsequently familiar argument 
that the settlement of the slave question rested en- 
tirely with the states which sustained the burden. 
To meet the wishes of their Southern friends, the 
first men of Boston — there is no need of qualifying 
the truth of this fact— called a meeting for August 
21st, in Faneuil Hall, to discountenance the sedi- 
tious principles of what even John Quincy Adams at 
that time wrote down as ^' a small, shallow and en- 
thusiastic party, preaching the abolition of slavery 
upon the principles of extreme democracy. ^^ 

The meeting was a Whig affair— its entire re- 
spectability was proof of this — but neither Daniel 
Webster nor Edward Everett was present. The 
principal speakers were Peleg Sprague and Harrison 
Gray Otis, both Harvard graduates and both 
lawyers. They said with great eloquence and 
fervor the very things which were expected of 
them, but they did not expostulate against the 
practical holding back or ''retention,'^ by Post- 
master-general Kendall, of certain material in the 
United States mail containing the heated anti- 
slavery arguments of the hour. Of the meeting 
and the manipulation of the mail, the terrible 
Adams wrote down with his gravest irony, ''All 
this is democracy and the rights of man." Toward 
Otis, Garrison in the Liberator showed a commiserat- 
ing sternness not unmixed with consideration, but 
for Peleg Sprague he exhibited no tenderness. He 



132 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON 

struck and spared not the orator whom he found 
*' diabolical.^' 

Some days later he was rewarded for his editorial 
attack on the Faueuil Hall meeting by the erection 
in front of his Boston home on Brighton Street 
of a stout gallows, built for the imaginary ''work- 
ing off" of two malefactors, himself and George 
Thompson. It was an ominous foretaste of what 
was soon to follow. 

On September 26, 1835, Garrison arrived in 
Boston after a month's absence, only to find what 
seemed to him a condition of apathy, but what was 
in reality that slow moving of the waters just before 
the pot begins to boil. With characteristic unin- 
telligence the public mind had begun slowly to 
concentrate its wrath on George Thompson, who 
during the year had been moving about New 
England, speaking mostly in the churches of denomi- 
nations liberal minded enough to open their doors. 
Thompson went also to New York, Philadelphia, 
Albany and Troy, where he seems to have spoken 
without rousing hostile feeling. The year saw him 
twice in Audover, but the theological defenses of that 
once potent citadel of orthodoxy were successfully 
prepared to sustain a long siege. A little past the 
middle of the summer opinion began to rise against 
him, his lectures were disturbed and broken up, 
and stones were thrown. His doctrines were offen- 
sive, but the fact that he was a '' foreigner ^' seems 
to have been equally serious, when he failed silently 
to assimilate with established American policies. 
The South at this time was waxing still warmer 



A PROVINCIAL MOB 133 

against GarrisOD, Arthur Tappau, and chietiy 
against Thompson. Throwing stones satisfied the 
unrest of the North, but the South, with its usual 
candor, wanted the heads of these incendiary 
fanatics. With threats of a boycott — the word 
did not then exist — of Northern trade, there 
arose the suggestion of sending the Abolitionists 
to Coventry and keeping them there. The North 
as yet had not develoiDed its conscience to the point 
reached by the colonists before the Eevolution, 
when it was prepared to languish commercially for 
the sake of a principle, and so naturally was fain 
to turn upon the troublesome radicals and — let 
them alone. The Abolitionists in Boston, who at 
this time seemed not especially inclined to foment 
strife by any exciting conduct on their own part, 
gave public notice of a meeting of the Boston 
Female Anti-Slavery Society, to be held on October 
14th, to which women only were invited, and which 
Mr. Thompson was to address. Immediately there 
arose a civic restlessness ; the Commercial Gazette 
of Boston took upon itself the i3rediction of trouble 
at this meeting, not ' ' from a rabble, but from men 
of property and standing," a phrase which was 
destined to live in the annals of this, the least 
creditable of the many events in Boston's vivid 
history. It became advisable, and indeed necessary, 
to postpone the date to October 21st and to change 
the place of meeting to a hall at 46 Washington 
Street, the headquarters of the anti-slavery office, 
in a building yet in existence. The name of Mr. 
Thompson was dropped from the program, and the 



134 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

day before the announced meeting he left Boston, 
and, as it soon proved, the country. The plotters 
of trouble, however, believed that he was still in 
town, and at about this time, and perhaps on the 
eventful day itself, "Thirty Truckmen^' gave 
warning that the Liberator must cease publication, 
else its editor would receive a coat of tar and 
feathers — that most senseless of all forms of public 
disapproval, but highly in favor at all times among 
the dull-witted. 

Only a few hours before the outrage took place, 
there flamed forth about the town a most incendi- 
ary handbill, directed against Thompson, urging 
'* friends of the Union '' to snake him out, and offer- 
ing a liberal reward to the first individual who 
should be the means of bringing him to the tar- 
kettle. This precious instrument was projected by 
two Central Wharf merchants and written by James 
L. Homer, a large portion of the edition finding its 
way into the hands of North End mechanics, an 
element most likely to appreciate the opportunity 
offered. The body of the plan was doubtless to 
prevent the holding of the meeting of the Boston 
Female Anti-Slavery Society — a society which, as 
Mr. Homer admitted, was not endorsed by thought- 
ful minds of that day in the ISTorth End of Boston. 

The handbills did their work quickly, and by the 
time that Garrison arrived at the hall, at twenty 
minutes before three in the afternoon, a crowd had 
already assembled in the street, and eventually 
swelled to between two and five thousand people. 
About a score of women were in the hall, one of 



A PROVINCIAL MOB 135 

whom was the indomitable and able Maria Weston 
Chapman, many years later the biographer of Har- 
riet Martineau. A press of more or less disorderly 
and menacing men began to throng about the stair- 
way and the door. In accordance with the wishes 
of the president of the society, Miss Mary S. Parker, 
Garrison decided to leave the meeting, and with 
Charles C. Burleigh, went into the office of the 
Anti-Slavery Society, where he began to write to a 
friend an account of the events actually happening 
about him. General Theodore Lyman, Jr., then 
mayor of Boston, soon arrived, to fiud an increasing 
mob, becoming more and more excited by their own 
cries for Thompson. He failed in his first tactics 
by urging instead of ordering the riotous throng to 
disperse. Meanwhile the women, with the calm- 
ness of seraphs, began to hold their meeting, show- 
ing that desperate courage of which their sex seems 
peculiarly capable. Deaf to the persuasions of the 
mayor, the crowd, possibly awed or ashamed by the 
persistent valor of the meeting, directed its attention 
to the office door, but Burleigh turned the lock and 
for a moment Garrison was safe. Under orders 
from the mayor, who was finding it equally difficult 
to persuade women perfectly willing to die and men 
ready for killing, the meeting adjourned to Mrs. 
Chapman's house on West Street, going first, how- 
ever, to Francis Jackson's home on Hollis Street. 

Since Thompson was not to be found, and the 
women had retired, it was evident that the mob 
must turn its attention to something definite. Ac- 
cordingly, with the mayor's assent, the sign of the 



136 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

Anti-Slavery Society was torn off and thrown into 
the street to be instantly smashed. But feeding the 
appetite of a mob is a futile means of appeasing it. 
The quarry was raw human flesh and not a deal 
board. As the cry for ' ' Garrison ' ' increased in 
violence, and as the danger of bodil^^ harm grew 
more imminent, the strange young man found time, 
in a moment of extreme x>eril, to admonish a fiiendly 
supporter not to relinquish the i)rinciple of non- 
resistance by urging force even to save life. Per- 
suaded by his friends, by the exigency of the situ- 
ation, and at last by his own common sense, Garri- 
son dropped from the rear of the building, and tried 
to enter Wilson's Lane, now Devonshire Street, but 
was there blocked by the mob. Retreating up- 
stairs, though ready to surrender himself, he was 
hidden under some boards, where the advance 
guard of skirmishers soon discovered him. Vol- 
untarily descending a ladder to the ground, Gar- 
rison was then led, if not dragged, to State Street 
and back of the City Hall, which, since the town of 
Boston became a city in 1822, had occupied the 
second story of the Old State House at the head of 
State Street. He was hatless, a rox)e was about his 
body, and his clothing was partially torn from him. 
With Josiah Quincy, Jr., then president of the 
Common Council, at or near his side. Garrison was 
brought, by the excellent manoeuvres of Mayor 
Lyman and some constables, inside the south door 
of the City Hall which was then immediately shut 
against the crowd, whose disposition seems to have 
been to rush their victim to the Frog Pond on Bos- 



A PEOVINCIAL MOB 137 

ton Common, and later to apply that last degrada- 
tion — a coat of tar and feathers. After Garrison 
had been carried to the mayor's office, the mayor 
appealed to the intelligence of the mob in the name 
of law and civil order. No spot in the civilized 
town of Boston seemed so safe a refuge for an inno- 
cent man in such an emergency as the common jail. 
Accordingly, papers were made out in due form, 
committing Garrison as a ^'rioter," and after he 
had been i:>rovided with various portions of raiment 
from different well-wishers to replace the new suit 
of clothes destroyed by his fellow citizens, he 
was smuggled out of the north door. By this time 
Garrison was in an ecstatic frame of mind, feeling 
that it was a ** blessed privilege thus to suffer in the 
cause of Christ." The hack into which he was hur- 
ried, though assailed with great but futile violence, 
made its way through the hustling mass of senseless 
fury to the ^'new and last refuge of liberty and 
life," the jail in Leverett Street. Locked in a cell 
with ''two delightful associates, a good conscience 
and a cheerful mind," John Bunyan himself could 
not have been happier than our malefactor. The 
next morning he was free to leave the jail, but by 
request and from motives of public policy, he de- 
parted the city and went with his wife to Brooklyn, 
Conn., the home of the Bensons. 

It was the first momentous crisis of Garrison's 
career, in which were to occur many episodes terri- 
fying to a spirit less intrepid. He faced the ordeal 
with great courage, and no charge lies against him 
for trying to escape when advised by Mayor Lyman 



138 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISOX 

so to do. After the event, however, his was not the 
dumbness of the sheep before its shearer, and both 
he and his friends had much to say of the mayor's 
failure to use the full majesty and power of his 
office to forestall and quell civic violence. Since 
his life — granting it to have been in danger — was 
undoubtedly saved by the resourcefulness of Mr. 
Lyman, the charge of ingratitude has been brought 
against Garrison. The controversy is an inter- 
minable one, and the facts can be interpreted ac- 
cording to the sympathies of each side. No serious 
harm was done after all, but out of this really dis- 
creditable event was born one phrase likely to re- 
main in Boston's annals. The Abolitionists lost no 
opportunity to ring changes on the characterization 
of the mob as composed of ^' gentlemen of property 
and standing. ' ' Even President Wayland of Brown 
University assured Miss Martineau that it was "all 
right — the mob having been composed entirely of 
gentlemen." What was meant seriously as exten- 
uation was immediately and forever after turned 
into laughter by the ceaseless iteration of the unfor- 
tunate phrase. 

It may well be doubted whether the true mob was 
not made up of such lively fellows — not necessarily 
of the baser, but certainly of the humbler sort — as 
longshoremen, truckmen, *^ North Enders,'^ and, in 
short, many of the kind which is usually on hand at 
a fire, or a street fight, and which quickly resolves 
itself into a mob. It was a rough and ready sort, 
little understood now when the population of every 
large city has a really dangerous class, and was most 



A PEOVINCIAL MOB 139 

forcibly personified by the Bowery Boys of New 
York, from whom later were recruited many of the 
famous Zouaves of the Civil War. 

In Garrison^ s enforced absence, Knapp was 
ordered to quit the office where the Liberator was 
published. The landlord of Garrison's house, fear- 
ing an attack upon it, wished his tenant to remove 
himself and his belongings. At this crisis, Samuel E. 
Sewall, one of the gentlest yet one of the firmest of 
the Abolitionists, offered to aid as far as possible in 
the continuance of the Liberator^ which for some 
time, as has been seen, had been in a poor way, and 
which naturally was now subject to every sort of 
financial pressure. 

At such a juncture, the leading character was 
eager to be back on the stage, and he informed his 
partner that he would soon be home, not wishing 
the charge to be made that he had ^* been driven out 
of Boston, and dare not return." At the same time 
he asks playfully whether his lost hat has yet been 
found. On November 4th, about two weeks after 
the mobbing. Garrison came back, staying with 
friends, and only visiting his own house. The cir- 
culation of the paper began to gain a little, and 
there were sent in occasional small sums to quicken 
the cause. 

Early in November Garrison saw, as he supposed, 
the last of George Thompson, who managed to get 
safely and secretly on board a packet bound for St. 
John, whence he was to sail for England. 

The extrusion of Thompson from the United 
States proved to be a powerful aid to the move- 



140 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

ment, and could Garrison have foreseen this, he per- 
haps would not have grieved so much, or have ex- 
pressed himself so mournfully. It gave the English 
Abolitionist a basis of practical knowledge and a 
story of j)ersonal experience on which to build up in 
his own country a yet stronger sentiment against 
American slavery. It would probably have been to 
the advantage of the i)ro-slavery advocates to dis- 
pose, by fair means or foul, of this formidable foe to 
their security. As already suggested, it was char- 
acteristic of a new country sorely to feel the 
strictures of a foreigner, especially an Englishman, 
and the most was doubtless made of this resent- 
ment, particularly in the South, and by the cautious 
spirits of the North. This objection to free speech 
in a visiting foreigner has largely passed away, in 
fact hardly even exists except when fanned to a 
blaze by a newspaper report, generally incorrect, 
of some visitor's '' views " on this country. Thomp- 
son and Dickens, who also abominated black slavery 
here, as he hated caste slavery in England, were 
definite critics and specified their opposition to 
conditions which they found ; but so far have we 
advanced in toleration of other men's corrections, 
that even twenty years ago we were only amused at 
the small and sour strictures on our civilization ex- 
pressed in The Great Bepuhlic, by Sir Lepel Grifian. 
In later years we were to be more fairly treated 
by James Bryce ; and yet to those who think at all 
about these matters, both Thompson and Bryce had 
merely the Englishman's habit of telling the truth 
as he sees it. However all this may be, Thompson 



A PROVINCIAL MOB 141 

was quite guiltless of discretion or tact, and the 
treatment he received might fairly have been ex- 
pected from a people still parochially minded in re- 
gard to foreigners and all their ways. It was just 
as indiscreet for him to talk as he thought in super- 
heated Boston, as it was fifty years later for Lord 
Frederick Cavendish to go to walk in Phoenix Park, 
and it would have been no great wonder had the 
former shared the fate of the latter. Garrison, as a 
matter of course, had to take on his own shoulders 
the abuse intended for his English colleague, and it 
is no discredit to him that he felt the joys as well as 
the sorrows of martyrdom. The greater the abuse 
the more vividly was the question to which he had 
consecrated his life kept before the public mind. 
The policy of such radicalism as his has always been 
to irritate the sensibilities of opponents, as cowhage 
maddens the epidermis. He went far in verbal 
torture of his victims, some of whom, as we now 
must think, were honorable and right-minded men ; 
but he did not often go to such extremes as Wendell 
Phillips, whose power to rasp seems at times to have 
been inordinate, and who lacked the serener moral 
grandeur of Garrison. 



CHAPTER VI 

A KIFT WITHIN THE ABOLITION LUTE 

By December, 1835, Garrison had read William 
EUery ChanniDg's Essay on Slavery, which he found 
"an inflated, inconsistent and slanderous produc- 
tion.^' It was not in accord with the Abolitionist 
character to welcome such a book — the earnest work 
of an absolutely sincere, if emotionally cold man 
who had gone as far as he could in a radical direc- 
tion without parting with his sense of fairness and 
discrimination. The Eev. Amos A. Phelps was 
for belaboring all " go-betweenities " of this kind. 
*' Every such man who comBS out should be re- 
viewed without respect of his person, and when he 
is naked let his nakedness be made visible.'^ De- 
manding complete surrender on the part of all who 
differed or even varied from the impeccable faith, 
it was natural that Garrison himself should find that 
the "sole excellencies'' of the Essay were "its 
moral plagiarisms from the writings of Abolition- 
ists." He pressed with unusual severity his hard 
doctrine of implicit allegiance when he chose to 
decry this book by the serene Channing, who had 
been impelled to his task by reading Mrs. Lydia 
Maria Child's Appeal in Favor of That Class of 
Americans Called Africans, as able in argument 
as uninviting in truth, and one of the most 



A RIFT IN THE ABOLITION LUTE 143 

sigDificant of the earlier propagandist utterances. 
Every convert, every one who so much as wavered 
from the right side, must, in Garrison's rigid 
doctrines, come under a sort of moral harrow, until 
he was rid of every suspicion of heresy. Channing 
was mentally, morally, spiritually, physically in- 
capable of extremism ; and, it must be admitted, 
that there certainly were passages and arguments 
in his book far too conciliatory toward that common 
adversary of all humanitarianism — the slaveholder. 
Eveu John Quincy Adams speaks of several chapters 
as having '*a very Jesuitical complexion.'' 

Within a few months after Garrison's refusal to 
welcome Channing as one whose face was turned 
toward the morning, they met at a hearing of the 
committee appointed by the Massachusetts legisla- 
ture to look into the requests of various Southern 
states that efforts be made to repress the Abolitionists. 
These requests meant nothing less than an attack 
on freedom of speech and of the press and called 
forth, at the State House, an attendance of per- 
sons not otherwise in complete accord. The two 
men shook hands, although Dr. Channing was 
not wholly sure that it was Garrison whom he 
was meeting. But the incident prompted the 
often-quoted remark made by Mrs. Maria Weston 
Chapman that "Righteousness and Peace have 
kissed each other." The following Sunday Gar- 
rison went to hear Channing preach and found 
his sermon ^^fuU of beauty and power." It was 
probably on this occasion that he occupied a pew 
belonging to the ancle of that fine but most 



144 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKEISON 

resolute New Eoglaud radical — Colouel Thomas 
Weutworth Hlgginson. He was notified indirectly 
the next day that the hospitality of the pew could 
be his DO longer. Thus began and soon terminated 
the personal relations between Garrison and Chan- 
niug. 

Miss Harriet Martineau, whose Abolitionism can- 
not be impeached, reveals in her Autohiography a 
Dr. Chanuing, staunch in his friendliness and 
courtesy to her at this time, even after she had had 
the audacity to attend and speak at a meeting held 
in the house of Francis Jackson. Such an act on 
the part of one who, like Thompson, was a ' ' for- 
eigner," put this able and energetic woman on 
record, and she had to pay the full social penalty 
for her temerity, but Channing was loyal through- 
out. It is impossible now to withhold the judgment 
that on such occasions there were committed firmly 
to the Abolition cause minds more open to chari- 
table sentiments than that of the leader, and that 
]\Iiss Martineau was one of them. The fiery zeal of 
the enthusiast must be the excuse for his occasion- 
ally intolerant spirit. 

Among the speakers at the legislative hearing 
was the Rev. Dr. Charles Follen, who by this time 
had lost, through non-renewal, his professorship of 
the German Language and Literature at Harvard 
College, on account of liis humanitarian i>ractices.^ 

^ Follen, friend of Korner, the poet of German patriotism, bad 
been proscribed for his lil)eral opinions at the University of 
Jena and compelled for the same reason to give np his professor- 
ship of civil law at Basle, He came to America iu 1824. 
After his withdrawal from Harvard, he went to a Unitarian 



A EIFT IN THE ABOLITION LUTE 145 

Usiug the Slime freedom of sx^eech that he went to 
the hearing to defend, Follen was interrupted by 
the chairman, George Lunt, who is remembered, if 
remembered at all aside from his uncommon literary 
merits, as a notable ''Hunker" of those days. 
Others not identified with Abolitionists were found 
to protest strongly at any proposed gag against free 
speech, and tiually, after several stormy heariugs, 
the committee submitted a report, which was more 
full of disap]3roval than denunciation of the anti- 
slavery excitement, and was not adopted. The 
lines in Massachusetts were not yet drawn sharply 
enough to make an open attack on her ancient 
prerogatives successful. IMr. Garrison, often a good 
tactician, did not on this occasion thrust himself 
too much to the front, but in his closiug remarks he 
used the forceful argument that he really had no 
country ; that he was "excluded by a bloody pro- 
scription from one-half of the national territory'' ; 
and that in effect the Union was even then "vir- 
tually dissolved.'' 

Meanwhile there had arisen thus early in the his- 
tory of this rapidlj^ advancing crusade a proposal, 
hitherto mentioned, which was encouraged by Presi- 
dent Jackson in his message of December, 1835. 
This was nothing less than a movement to prevent 
the use of the national postal service for the pur- 
pastorate in New York City, which he held for two years when 
he again suffered for his principles through a se%'erance of his 
relations with this congregation. He perished, with many 
others, by the burning of the steamer Lexingfon on January 13, 
1840 Every Unitarian church in Roston refused the use of its 
edifice for holding services in honor of Dr. Foileu. 



146 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

pose of sendiug i^rinted miiterial hostile to the in- 
stitution of slavery to those portions of the country 
where the institution nourished. It is most difficult 
for minds fully accustomed to the concei^tiou of 
this government as a concrete, definite, and in- 
separate whole, to understand how such a proposal 
could ever have been put forth by the Chief Execu- 
tive or have found favor with any considerable part 
of the citizens. Yet the South was unanimous in 
its desire to pass measures, which at their face 
value were unconstitutional ; it failed only in fix- 
ing on a concrete plan. In the North, though opin- 
ioiis were far more divided, it is doubtful if the 
constitutional objections were a whit more seriously 
felt than by the Southerners. Democracy was still 
a highly individualized sentiment, and expressed 
itself in exaggerated modes of personal freedom. 
It was far from that stage of development when it, 
as well as nobilitj^, was felt to have its obligations. 
Therefore the suggestions, now seeminglj^ prepos- 
terous, to exclude matter not treasonable, obscene, 
or dishonest, from the mail, were not frowned upon 
as subversive of the common rights of a free people. 
It was necessary to fall back on the right of each 
state to determine upon its internal affairs, with its 
implied power to exclude whatever was prejudicial 
to its welfare. The South was not obliged to be in- 
consistent with itself in taking this attitude, but the 
North was of many executive and legislative miuds 
in its attempts to assist the South in repressing the 
growth of Abolitionism. The spirit of the North 
may have been willing to aid its anxious Southern 



A mFT IN THE ABOLITION LUTE 147 

brethren iu protecting their established customs, 
but the flesh at this time evidently recoiled from 
taking an attitude which could not have been main- 
tained. In spite of the frowning hostility of the 
'^religious corporations'' — to use Miss Martineau's 
cold epithet — and of many higher institutions of 
learning, the despised Nazarenes were growing — 
^ ' at the rate of nearly one new society a day. ' ' ^ The 
country as a wliole was concerning itself with affairs 
which seemed to be of far greater moment — among 
them the beginning of the agitations to be ended by 
the annexation of Texas to bastion the pro -slavery 
edifice ; while the anti-slavery enthusiasts, still few 
but hopefully gaining in numbers, fought as skir- 
mishers over matters which seemed of relatively 
small importance, but which had the quality to an- 
noy. Their strongest strategic move, at present as 
for some time past, was the continuous introduction 
of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia. It was fortunate for these Aboli- 
tionists that their contention that the District should 
be rid of its shameful burden had a semblance of 
reason, even in the minds of those indifferent to 
larger aspects. 

The late Professor Sumner, in his recent work on 
Folkways j^ holds with his usual force that moral 
enthusiasm such as that displayed for thirty years 
before the outbreak of strife does not determine or 
occasion great political alterations. "The human- 
itarians of the nineteenth century," says Professor 
Sumner, " did not settle anything. . . . The in- 

» Life, Vol. II, p. 79. ^Folkways, pp. 306, 307. 



148 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISOK 

terests normally coutrol life. It is uot right [why 
does he say ^ right ' ?] that ethical generalizations 
should get dogmatic authority and be made the 
rule of life.^' However interesting, academically, 
such a thesis will always be, there is still some 
reason to believe that the Abolitionists have always 
supposed that they did effect something and that 
they were animated by moral forces, and none more 
so than Garrison. The anti-slavery people of every 
shade and variation at least had convictions. A 
fire, once kindled, does not readily stay in one spot, 
and so it soon fell out that even politicians felt the 
heat and then the blaze of this consuming problem. 
Some few were favorably warmed by it and began 
to come under conviction, but the time was not yet 
ripe for politicians to be affected except by the usual 
motives of exi^ediency. Several parties were to be 
born only to die before the cause became so strong 
that it could say to men in public life that they 
must definitely declare their opinions or jDrepare to 
meet the fate of the indecisive. For the present 
a regardful timidity kept the doubtful or the indif- 
ferent on good terms with the South. It was not 
yet necessary for them to cringe. Still it can be 
fairly said that slavery by this time was morally 
abhorrent to such men as Edward Everett, however 
cautious their words and actions. 

During a large part of the year 1836 Garrison 
was away from Boston, altliough the editorial work 
on the Liherator went on, even if not with the cus- 
tomary regularity. He was far from well and still 
suffered from the strain put upon him nervously by 



A KIFT IN THE ABOLITION LUTE 149 

his recent excitiug experiences. He loosed his hold 
on the editorial reins but did not let them drop. 
Knapp in 1835 had become the sole publisher and 
the partnership was dissolved, Charles Burleigh fill- 
ing as well as he could Garrison's place. Early in 
the new year we find the absent editor urging that 
** the debates in Congress upon the petitions for the 
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia " be 
given the first place and that ''all official documents 
in opposition to our cause " be published instanter.^ 
This was the instinct of a good journalist, yet it 
shows that the writer, while professing to take no 
part in political strife, was not slow to profit by the 
importance of it to his cause. 

Garrison's ill health was reflected in his letters, 
which at times are exceptionally bitter. Of the 
people of Boston, when the Massachusetts Anti- 
Slavery Society, successor to the New England 
Society, had just met with sixteen refusals of halls 
or churches in which to hold its annual meeting, he 
says, " They are liars and the truth is not in them." 
In spite of his denunciation of the " Nero 
McDuffie" and the "Domitian Marcy," he thinks 
that '' we ought to be more tender of the South," in 
view of the conduct of this ''hypocritical and 
callous-hearted city." 

The cause this year received from Gerrit Smith, 
who had left the Colonization and joined the Aboli- 
tion movement, a gift of one thousand dollars, but 
the benefaction did not prevent Garrison from find- 
ing something disingenuous in the convert's manner 
' Life, Vol. II, p. 85. 



150 WILLIAM LLOiTD GAKKISON 

of leaving his early faith. Smith, with his usual 
broad temper, did not take such rebuffs hardly. 
He even referred lightly to his master as having 
" boxed his ears," nor did he at that time restrain 
his hand from helping out the finances of the 
Liberator, There were Abolitionists more denunci- 
atory and reckless of speech than their leader and 
certainly, according to the standard of the age, 
some of them were held to be more blasphemous ; 
but none had a greater gift for being thoroughly 
irritating when i)rinciple was at stake. Telling the 
exact truth as regards Laodicean friend or bitter 
foe, was more than a passion with Garrison : it was 
almost a frenzy ; no less so when his utterances 
were made with great calmness and measured cal- 
culation. The small-minded were naturally the 
more embittered — while the larger spirits, such as 
Gerrit Smith and Dr. Channing, bore Garrison's 
censures with fine magnanimity. It seems probable 
that, in spite of his bold speech, Garrison's cause 
throve at times, because of the balanced character 
of some who were not so ready to follow as to listen 
and digest. His determination to thresh out 
every particle of chaff and leave only the pure 
grain, and to allow no man or woman to be an ally 
without implicit acceptance of every tenet, savored 
more of military than of political method. In no 
case did Garrison apply his policy — if anything so 
devoid of tact or compromise can be called policy 
— with more hardihood than in the attitude he took 
toward Dr. Channing's book. 
Although Garrison visited Boston to appear be- 



A EIFT IN THE ABOLITION LUTE 151 

fore the previously meutioued joint committee 
(known as tlie Luut Committee) of the jVIassachusetts 
legislature, he did not actually take up his residence 
again in Boston until September, 1836. Earlier 
in this year he had interested himself in attacking 
Dr. Lyman Beecher's recent plea for a better pres- 
ervation of the Sabbath. '^ His [Garrison's] central 
idea had been to rebuke Dr. Beecher for being so 
strenuous in behalf of the fourth commandment, 
while giving his protecting influence to slavery, 
which annihilated the whole decalogue, and ex- 
cluded two and a half millions of his countrymen 
from all the benefits of the Sabbath.'' ^ Here is 
found the early blossoming of a new reform on his 
already fecund radicalism. While meaning to 
assail Beecher' s heterodoxy on the anti-slavery 
question, he commits himself to the utterance that 
he is not in favor of imi)osiug punishment for 
violations of a formal keex)ing of the Sabbath, or 
of enforcing its observance. Stiff opposition to 
such a latitu dinar ian view was not slow in coming. 
Small as any personal view on this matter seems 
to-day, it was one of the several factors which, 
rapidly grafting themselves on Garrison's body of 
ideas, universal reformer as he really was, were 
very soon to make trouble for him and to force 
a schism in the one cause to which his life was most 
devoted. A losing cause had no terrors for Garri- 
son and although he recognized that his lax 
Sabbatical views were soon to cost the Liberator 
many subscribers, he found occasion to say to a 

' Life, Vol. II, p. 108. 



152 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

friend : "I am forced to believe that, as it respects 
the greater portion of professing Christians in the 
land, Christ has died in vain." Surely less than 
ten years of active humanitarian service had 
mightily changed the rather priggish young New- 
bury port printer, full of religion and sometimes 
cant, into a lighter of shams, robust enough to have 
suited even Thomas Carlyle, the American edition 
of whose Sartor EesartuSj by the way, appeared at 
this very time. 

In the fall of this year, 1836, he was present at 
an important meeting in New York of some thirty 
of the seventy agents employed to spread the prop- 
aganda—among them Theodore D. ^Yeld, Charles 
Stuart, assailant in England of the American 
Colonization Society, and Eev. Beriah Green. 
Weld had left Lane Seminary for conscience' sake, 
and become one of Garrison's closest followers, 
differing only from him, as did Whittier, in an 
expressed wish not to intrude the woman question 
into the more immediate problem. 

At the close of this year Garrison submitted him- 
self incognito to a phrenological examination at 
the hands of one of the then famous Fowlers. 
With characteristic boldness the Garrisons have 
published the results of this survey of their father's 
mental and moral state. Some of the details are 
curious and perhaps valuable, for Garrison's 
peculiarities must be fairly considered in a general 
estimate of him as a man of genius. According to 
the test he was secretive, obstinate and of large 
self-esteem. '^His mind always expands on sub- 



A EIFT IN THE ABOLITION LUTE 153 

jects the longer lie dwells on them — the more he 
says, the more he has to say." "He always wants 
the reius in his own hands.'' "He never com- 
promises to secure the approbation of others, but 
acts totally regardless of what others may think or 
say." A multitude of other qualities, in the main 
strong and good, were disclosed, but the weaknesses 
of his vital make-up were also brought out in a 
somewhat astonishing way. It is difficult, however, 
to believe that Fowler had no previous knowledge 
of his sitter. 

Early in the year the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery 
Society assumed the burden of the Liberator^ the 
condition of which was still languishing. The 
enthusiasm of local Abolitionists was called upon 
to sustain the society's determination to edit and 
print a paper in no sense its official organ. In 
March the Liberator was enlarged to meet the ijres- 
sure of constantly increasing anti-slavery news, 
and "by mid-summer the subscribers numbered 
some three thousand." It is difficult to conceive 
a loftier ideal than that set by Garrison for the 
conduct of his paper. He insisted upon free dis- 
cussion from all sides in its i:)ages. He would not 
in any way come under the control of the friendly 
society which assumed a burden he could not carry, 
and he was unwilling to conflict with the larger 
endeavors of the American Anti-Slavery Society. 

A word must be said here of the once famous 
"Eefuge of Oppression," a department of the 
Liberator^ called in the first volume the "Slavery 
Eecord," and into which Garrison ironically 



154 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISOK 

dumped about everything he could find hostile to 
his cause, ''some of the choicest specimens of anti- 
Abolition morality, decency, logic and humanity — 
generally without note or comment.'' It was a 
telling example of his strong journalistic keenness 
and his humorous facility for turning the tables on 
his opponents by a show of fair-mindedness to which 
they could i^resent not the slightest objection with- 
out raising a laugh against themselves. The Rev. 
Samuel Osgood, of Springfield, Mass., who was 
conservative on the Sabbath question, but a good 
anti-slavery man withal, once playfully said, when 
he ventured to make some slight opposition, that 
he was in ''hourly expectation of being put into 
the 'Refuge of Oppression.' " It proved to be a 
veritable pit for Garrison's enemies, but it was of 
their own digging. 

In the spring both branches of the Massachusetts 
legislature adopted resolutions in favor of the right 
of petition, — a right just denied, on January, 1837, 
by the national House of Representatives. This 
step gave Garrison the keenest satisfaction, for he 
was never averse to political action which helped 
his cause, although during this very year, at the 
annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery 
Society, he submitted a resolution to the effect, in 
part, that Abolitionists ought not to attach them- 
selves as such to any party. 

A powerful ally and friend, who was to be con- 
tinuously faithful to Garrison and Garrisonianism, 
now first appeared on the scene in the person of 
Wendell Phillips, a six years' graduate of Harvard 



A RIFT IN THE ABOLITION LUTE 155 

College, a lawyer by profession, the son of Boston's 
first mayor, and endowed with many graces, per- 
sonal and social. So completely did he represent 
the Boston type of cultivated gentlemen of the period 
that it seems hardly possible to exclude him from 
the respectable yet agitated group which less than 
a year and a half before this had participated in or 
did nothing to quell the October mob eager for 
Garrison's life or suppression. There can be no 
doubt about the courage displayed by this young 
Phillips, who was representative of all that was 
rei^utabLe in Boston and cultivated and elegant in 
Harvard College, when he crossed his social Rubicon, 
insignificant as that stream may appear in com- 
parison with the totality of things. Something 
must be said a little farther on of him and of his 
break with the traditions that hold most men fast. 
Just now the feeling in Boston was so strongly 
against this disturbing radicalism that this very 
year when Philli]Ds first ''came out," no meeting- 
house could be secured for the annual gathering of 
the Massachusetts Society and only three were open 
to the New England Anti-Slavery Convention. 
Even halls for public use of sufficient size were 
closed, although, as Garrison said with his usual 
sting, there was no public hall which could not 
"be occupied by jugglers, mountebanks, ballad- 
singers, rope-dancers, religious impostors, etc., etc., 
as they shall wish to hire." 

For the sake of his family, Garrison went to 
Brooklyn, Conn., in June for some weeks, leaving 
Oliver Johnson as acting editor, but returned about 



156 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

the first of September. Meanwhile the begimiiDgs 
of a serious crisis had arisen in the anli-slavery 
ranks, from which ultimately a schism resulted. 

Brooks Adams in his unsparing attack on the 
early hierarchy — "The Emancipation of Massa- 
chusetts" — has shown that the clergy bitterly 
fought all encroachments against their power. 
That this attitude of selt-deiense, not to say spir- 
itual arrogance, was by no means dead in the kite 
thirties of the nineteenth century on the same battle- 
ground where the Mathers had waged fierce warfare 
a century and a half earlier, api^ears plainly enough 
in the fairlj^ well concerted opposition which now 
arose against the extreme left of the Abolitionist 
movement. Manners were gentler, no doubt, and 
perhaps more sly. But the determination to main- 
tain an unbroken front was then as strong as ever. 

Without entering minutely into the causes of this 
attempted and finally successful disruption of the 
several elements of Abolitionism, it is enough to 
say that the trouble mainly began with the forging 
of a rather mild thunderbolt by the hand of the 
Rev. Nehemiah Adams, more celebrated nearly 
twenty years later for his once famous "South-side 
View of Slavery," which may now be rated as one 
of rhe " humors of the campaign " then raging. In 
a pastoral letter written by liim but issued by the 
General Association of Massachusetts, he sought in 
gentlest manner to preserve the Orthodox Con- 
gregational pulpit intact from the disturbing ques- 
tions of the day so likely to impair tlie direct object 
of the ministry, the inculcation of personal religion. 



A KIFT IX THE ABOLITION LUTE 157 

But Mr. Adcims weut further aud touched upon a 
question which generally creates trouble whenever 
it is set going. Starting with a large aud vapid 
theorem that ' ' the power of woman is in her de- 
pendence," he proceeded rapidly to reprove them 
who ' ' countenance any of that sex who so far forget 
themselves as to itinerate in the character of public 
lecturers and teachers." Trouble in this world has 
often centred about a woman. In this instance, 
two women, the Misses Sarah and Angelina 
Grimke, were the immediate cause of the good Mr. 
Adams's alarm, although he did not even pay them 
the small distinction of admitting their existence in 
his strictures. Both were born in Charleston, S. C, 
and had known and learned to hate slavery at first 
hand. They were of the Society of Friends, and 
must be accounted among the staunchest of Gar- 
rison's adherents. The influence of their connec- 
tion with the earliest movements of the woman 
suffrage cause in this country can hardly be over- 
estimated. Contrary to all Pauline injunctions, 
they began, as young women, to speak in Aboli- 
tion meetings, aud the pastoral letter is sufiicient 
evidence that the impression made by them on the 
public was growing too strong to suit a conservative 
ecclesiastical taste. It was Sarah Grimke who had 
recently declared that *^ although brought up in the 
midst of slavery, and having converse with hun- 
dreds of well -treated slaves, she has never found 
one who did not wish to be free." ^ Late in the year 
1836, the sisters had addressed the convention of 
^Life, Vol. II, p. 117, 



158 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON 

anti-slavery delegates held in New York, and by 
the middle of the next year were speaking in 
churches and elsewhere in Massachusetts. Miss 
Angelina Grimke had also answered Catherine 
Beecher by a letter, first printed in the Liberator 
and later in a pamphlet, which the brothers Garri- 
son assert positively to have been the ''beginning 
of the woman's rights agitation in America." ' It 
was indeed time that something pastoral was done, 
for Sarah Grimke claimed, not as a Quakeress, but 
as a woman, the right to preach. 

A few weeks later five Massachusetts ministers 
of the Gospel sent the first shot across Garrison's 
bow, by issuing an '' Appeal of Clerical Aboli- 
tionists," better known as the '' Clerical Appeal," 
in which, during the absence of its editor, they 
laid bare the shortcomings of the iy^6era/or, asserting 
that its excessive language and imperious demands, 
and the diversion of contributions from religious 
objects into anti-slavery channels, were the means 
of preventing ' ' many worthy men from appearing 
in favor of immediate emancipation." Oliver John- 
son, as acting editor, was brisk to reply ; the Eev. 
Amos A. Phelps, general agent for the Massachu- 
setts Society, took up the cudgels, and so did Gar- 
rison from Brooklyn, in defense of Johnson, who 
was the definite person attacked, and in defiance of 
the '^ sanctimonious pretensions of the great mass 
of the clergy in our land." The warning shot was 
quickly answered and Garrison had defied the 
American clergy as such. His opponents, how- 
» Life, Vol. II, p. 134. 



A RIFT IN THE ABOLITION LUTE 159 

ever, still wavered ; those who saw the battle from 
a distance were not slow to rejoice over such dissen- 
sion. From certain signers in Andover Theological 
Seminary came at once another '^ Appeal," specify- 
ing charges of a more general nature. 

Garrison was always so ready to make forcible 
rejoinders, and the '' moment any one, even a real 
friend, has put a foot out of the traces," to turn 
fiercely upon him as a real foe — so at least it was 
charged — that it is uncertain how keenly he felt the 
beginning of what proved to be a serious defection. 
He did, however, show some sensitiveness at the pub- 
lication of the various '' Appeals" in the New Eng- 
land Spectator rather than in the Liberator. Follow- 
ing the Andover message, there soon appeared a sec- 
ond ''Clerical Appeal" from the originators of the 
first, in which objection was offered to the LiheratorsiS 
the official organ of the Massachusetts An ti- Slavery 
Society, an organization made up, as it certainly 
was in part, of those who did not and could not 
relish that paper's attack on their religious senti- 
]nents. The reply of the society, through its board 
of managers, showed clearly that no disposition was 
yet manifest to distrain Garrison or any one else as 
an individual from the expression of his own views. 
Still another '' Appeal " pushed the contention into 
yet narrower limits and really brought this Concio 
ad cleruin to an end, so far as it affected the 
Liberator or its editor. Lewis Tappan, however, 
in New York thought tliat the relations between the 
Massachusetts Society and its organ did give an op- 
portunity for hostile criticism. In August, 1837, 



160 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON 

Garrison wrote that the Liberator iu case of a dis- 
junction could live only through that year. Had 
the paper at this time been foi'ced to separate itself 
entirely from all affiliations, it is probable that it 
would have embraced universal reform, and have 
come to grief. As it was, the assistance which it 
received in the cause of Abolition was derived 
mainly from persons of substance interested in that 
one cause. The advocates of ''holy reform," to use 
Garrison's phrase, were not poor in spirit but were 
in no condition to subsidize a sinking newspaper. 
The American Society meanwhile kept a straight 
course toward the pohir star — the emancij^ation of 
the slaves. Its organ, the Emancipator^ made no 
reference to the various '' Apjjeals" issuing in Mas- 
sachusetts and did not take up the troubles of Gar- 
rison on one side or of the disturbed evangelicals on 
the other. The society also found it necessary to 
disclaim connection with persons seeking to ^xo- 
mote principles other than those set forth in its own 
declaration. Before the year was out Henry Clarke 
Wright was dismissed by the executive committee, 
on account of his peace and ''no government " doc- 
trines, and the Grimk^ sisters were evidently under 
official displeasure for their mixing up Abolitionism 
and woman's rights in a disturbing fashion. 

If Garrison did not hesitate to remonstrate forci- 
bly with his friends for presuming to differ with 
him, it is also true that occasionally they would 
give him a taste of his own sharp medicine, which, 
however, they usually di]ut<Ml with a Cliristinn for- 
bearance and delicacy. James G. Birney, as loyal 



A EIFT IN THE ABOLITION LUTE 161 

to the cause as auy man could be, was displeased 
with Garrison's rejoinders to the ''Appeals," and 
according to Garrison's admission, Birney's "for- 
mer confidence iu his judgment and prudence was 
shakeu." Lewis Tappan, with a sanity of utter- 
ance foreign to the usual modes of anti-slavery dis- 
cussion, reasoned with Garrison, told him that the 
cause could not afford to "drive away, or 'knock 
in the head' friends who are substantially right," 
and assured him that the troubles in Massachusetts 
were "unknown elsewhere." But Garrison did not 
then or ever have much toleration for those who 
were " snbstantially right." It was in the nature 
of the man, as it is in practically all dominant char- 
acters, to want submission as well as adherence, and 
this in spite of his iterated statements that the one 
demand to be made on a member of an anti-slavery 
society was a belief in the abolition of American 
slavery. To him the course of the American Soci- 
ety and its organ was "criminal and extraordi- 
nary," and he raised his cries of a wounded man 
still louder. Even a gentle letter from Elizur 
Wright, Jr., fiuled to move him except to more 
words. A paradoxical English writer has recently 
said that nothing will really drive one to insanity 
except logic. Garrison knew that he was right and 
he could always prove it from his own premises and 
to his own satisfaction. Yet, though he had reason 
on his side, hard and sur(^, he was lacking in sweet 
reasonableness— not iu all things, but in the es- 
sentials, and often failed to see the merits of ami- 
ability, gentleness, and the persuasive attitude. If 



162 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

the tolerance shown by others failed to please him, 
so did his relentless logical deductions from pre- 
mises conceivably inadmissible, at times fail to per- 
suade his equals in ability and moral energy. But 
his oneness of character seems never to have been 
doubted, and this did the most to jduU him through 
the prodigious task he had set before himself. 
Seldom was he disingenuous, but when, after re- 
ceiving such letters from Wright, who feared '' spir- 
itual Quixotism^' for his friend, and from Lewis 
Tappau, he asked in the Liberator what the silence 
of the Emancipator ^^meant,'^ he put the question 
in full knowledge of just exactly what it did mean 
— that his friends disapproved of his stopping the 
advance of a great reform to skirmish with a few 
malcontents. 

At the meeting in October of the Massachusetts 
Society at Worcester, Garrison seemed to have suf- 
fered no loss of his local supremacy, but the 
Spectator^ now owned by John Gulliver, a deacon 
under the Rev. Charles Fitch, one of the appellants, 
openly advocated a new sectarian organization. 
Back to the charge came Garrison with cries of 
^'canf and ''Jesuitical whitewasher'' ; — the argu- 
ment fell lower and lower with recrimination and 
personal self-defense. All that he seemed to gain 
was an unbroken line of colored adherents. 



CHAPTER VII 

AN AWAKENING PEOPLE 

Fortunate it was for the cause and its protag- 
onist at this point that something more vital than 
logomachy providentially swept away for the time 
beiug all contention over perfectionism, holiness, 
clerical hypocrisy and other dissonances, and brought 
in, with tragic message, a new champion of Aboli- 
tion — one in the main after Garrison's whole heart 
— the young, eloquent and scholarly Wendell 
Phillips. Conservatives, perhaps a little weary 
of holding up their horror-stricken hands so con- 
tinually against Garrison, were to find in this 
nevv combatant a fresh object for condemnation. 
Phillips sprang into the contest at an eventful mo- 
ment, when the whole country outside the slave 
states had its first realization that a successful con- 
tinuance of slavery must involve a sup]3ression not 
only of free speech, of the right of petition, but 
above all of a free press. Not until twenty-two 
years later when John Brown was hanged, was there 
such a general and sudden welling up of popular 
emotion as when the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was 
killed while protecting the presses on which was 
printed his Observer in Alton, 111. His story must 
be told, though briefly, for it had little to do with 
Garrison's personal career. 



164 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRLSON 

When Lovejoy was editor of tlie St. Louis 
Observer y he objected editorially to the burniiig 
alive iu 1836 of a negro who had killed an officer 
while the latter was trying to apprehend him. The 
office of this paper was destroyed, and Lovejoy 
t])ereupon moved to Alton, where his press was soon 
broken ; in August, 1837, his office and press were 
again ruined. In November of this year a new 
press arrived and Lovejoy' s friends voted this reso- 
lution : "The cause of human rights, liberty of 
speech and the press, demand that the Alton 
Observer be reestablished with its present editor." 
So near the border, this was nothing but rank 
defiance to every shade of pro-slavery sympathy, 
dangerous to manifest and difficult to maintain. 
Notwithstanding this condition of affairs, however, 
the mayor ai^pointed a special force to guard the 
property of the paper, then in a warehouse. By 
nine o'clock in the evening, seeing no signs of 
trouble, most of this guard had left. Soon after a 
gang of what we should now call "hoodlums" at- 
tacked the warehouse and began to throw stones 
and to fire shots. The dozen of Lovejoy's friends 
who still remained returned the shots and one of the 
mob was killed. The building was then set on fire, 
and as Lovejoy came out he was shot down and 
killed ; his press was destroyed and thrown into 
the river. 

Such are the merest outlines of the most signifi- 
cant tragedy thus far in a cause whicli up to this 
time many had refused to admit was a cause. 
Lovejoy, though bearing the title of Reverend, was 



AN AWAKENING PEOPLE 165 

militant ; lie died while defending liis own property 
and rights, but he defied with deliberate purpose the 
violent opinions of the place where he had decided 
to put his back to the wall. Garrison, no less brave, 
no less determined, would not have met shot with 
shot, but that did not prevent him from mourning 
Lovejoy's death. He was willing to admit that 
Lovejoy was a martyr, but not ''a Christian 
martyr. He died like Warren, not like Stephen." 
Unyielding as ever, though his own cause was to 
profit immensely by this timely taking off, Garri- 
son did not fail to inveigh against any of the fol- 
lowers of Jesus of Nazareth ' ' resorting to carnal 
weapons under any pretext or in any extremity 
whatever." This man's consistency was a baffling 
thing to the worldly minded. 

On December 8th, a public meeting of protest 
was held in Faneuil Hall, Boston, although an 
earlier petition, headed by Dr. William Ellery 
Channing, had failed to gain permission to use this 
building, still sacred to a Bostonian's faith in free 
institutions. To this meeting Garrison went only as 
a spectator. How could he keep away ; yet how 
could he well have spoken, a non-resistant in pro- 
fession, without dampening an ardor which he 
knew ought to have fullest expression ? Even the 
bitter enemies of Garrison — and they still exist — 
must admit that by his self-effacement on such an 
occasion he showed excellent taste. His sense of 
humor, too, doubtless told him how awkward it 
would be for his hearers — or some of them — to listen 
comfortably to a man whom two years and one 



166 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKRISON 

month earlier thej^ came perilously near to serving 
as Lovejoy had just been served, but with the 
violence all on one side. 

If Garrison did not say anything at this time, 
however, AYeudell Phillips did. His sentence in 
reply to the socially august and important James 
Trecothick Austin, Attorney -General of Massa- 
chusetts, who, according to Garrison, had, in a " vile 
and inflammatory'' manner, dared to compare the 
Alton rioters with some of the cherished idols of 
our Revolutionary days, will live as long as there 
are American schoolboys, and as long as there re- 
mains in this country a relish for the eloquence 
that sways and compels even when it does not con- 
vince. The decade which knew the overwhelming 
oratory of Webster's reply to Hayne had the good 
fortune to hear the deadly, penetrating forcefulness 
of the philippic which closed with : ''For the senti- 
ments he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the 
prayers of Puritans and the blood of jDatriots, the 
earth should have yawned and swallowed him up ! " 
Thus did Phillips really begin his career of unre- 
mitting radicalism ; and from this time on he drew 
upon himself a measure of the attack hitherto 
reserved for Garrison alone. 

Much has been said of Phillips's sacrifice of social 
position, but it may well be doubted whether he 
felt it keenlj^ or concerned himself greatly about it. 
A gentleman's position is secure provided that he 
does not violate certain established traditions — and 
Phillips, born into a definite social stratum, con- 
tinued to the end, correct, elegant, self-possessed. 



AN AWAKENING PEOPLE 167 

well-bred and well-read. There was not a soul in 
the compact, highly decorous, comfortable Boston 
of those days who could possibly injure him except 
by a figurative sticking of tongue in cheek. It is 
wholly probable that Phillips, like many another 
of his class before and after him, was tired of mere 
decorousness. He was a Puritan, a Sam Adams 
kind of man, not an arbiter eleganUarum — and so 
found his way an easy one out of rather meaningless 
conventional restraints, and led henceforth a life 
of extraordinary austereness and simi^licity. The 
habitual note of exaggeration in all that he uttered 
found no counterpart in his dress or daily habits. 
He was a very scourge to what seemed to him 
Phai'isaism and he said in public many extravagant 
and needlessly cruel things which have served to 
place him, in the lapse of time, on a somewhat 
lower pedestal than Garrison, who had no ' ' advan- 
tages" to lose, no position to forfeit, but who bore 
himself loftily at all times. 

At about this eventful period the ranks of Aboli- 
tion were also joined definitely by Edmund Quincy, 
the compeer of Phillips in education, social privi- 
lege, professional standing and personal distinction. 
Unlike Phillips, his ceasing to breathe exclusively 
the agreeable atmosphere of a complete respectability 
did not render him bitter, however positive in 
speech, or distrustful in attitude toward the class 
into which he was born and from which he never 
separated with violence. Yet it cannot be said of 
him that this son of a president of Harvard Uni- 
versity, bred on polite comi)romises and gracious 



168 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEKISON 

toleratioD, was a whit less stem in his judgments or 
less unbeudiiig in his stand for human rights. He 
, came rather deliberately to his private conviction 
that such extremists as the Garrisonians, however 
harsh their waj^ of jjutting things, were right in 
principle. James Russell Lowell says that Quincy 
'^ early in life devoted himself deliberately to the 
somewhat arduous profession of gentleman." To 
a man reared to think as well as to speak re- 
strainedly, the transition must have been sharp to 
his natural delicacy. It could not have been so 
easy for him as for Phillips to fellowship with those 
whose language and manners were almost uncouth 
by contrast with the associations of his former life. 
If to lose in some measure the warmth of earlier 
friendships was to drink the waters of Marah, 
there is no evidence that Quincy relished, as Phillips 
seems to have relished, the bitter taste. 

The year 1837, which began with a renewal of 
petitions to abolish slavery in the District of 
Columbia, was not to close without a sort of 
rapprochement between the younger Adams, old 
in years, but still young in moral ardoi' and intel- 
lectual belligerency, and his just recognized allies, 
the Abolitionists. Neither side made any pretense 
of admiring the other, but it was a gain to the larger 
aspects of anti-slavery when Adams at his home in 
Quincy received such positive characters as Birney, 
Francis Jackson, the Grimkes, Whittier, Goodell 
and even Garrison himself, who tells us that all 
were met ''with respect and cordialitj\" For a 
man as particular about his political bedfellows as 



AN AWAKENING PEOPLE 169 

Adams, this was a move toward a better mutual 
understanding. But within a year or so later that 
formidable old man was recording in his diary his 
unfavorable judgments of Emerson, Garrison, 
Browuson and other radicals, all of whom ''come 
in, furnishing each some plausible rascality as an 
ingredient for the bubbling caldron of religion and 
politics." ^ 

With the pro- slavery side and its timorous 
Northern supporters using every parliamentary 
device to prevent further protesting before Congress 
against the instituted fact of slavery, the Abolition- 
ists now had reason to feel that they had at last 
driven their enemy from cover and that they 
might yet have a chance for a closer grapple. 
Judged strategically, their worst defeat of a polit- 
ical nature was the recognition at this time of the 
independence of Texas (1837) ; but the Abolition 
movement had as yet entered in no important way 
the political field, and its followers had good cause 
to rejoice. A tremendous impulse had been given 
to forces at work throughout the body social by 
an organization such as the American Anti-Slavery 
Society — mother already of a prolific and ever-in- 
creasing brood of subsidiary associations, — and by 
so stirring a tragedy as the Lovejoy murder. The 
mob spirit was already doing more good by opening 
the eyes of reputable citizens, hitherto closed in 
easy moral repose, than it could possibly do harm 
by smashing windows, throwing filth, and other- 
wise trying to frighten peaceful but exceedingly 
^ Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, Vol. X, p, 345. 



170 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISOX 

resolute men and women who were sustained by 
that quiet courage of genuine radicalism which 
taught them to "dread the grave as little as their 
bed.^' 

Ernest Kenan says somewhere that no man may 
safely engage in more than one reform at a time, 
but must consecrate and employ his whole energy 
in a single moral enterprise. Was Eenan right, or 
was Garrison a universal genius of philanthropy, 
covering ethically the whole human domain and 
ignoring no dark corners with the rays of his holy 
zeal? The country was now rapidly centring its 
attention, outside of direct political action, on the 
grave problem which he had been foremost in x^re- 
senting, and Garrison at this time had full control 
of the Liberator after seven years of more or less 
restraint. Does his course confirm the truth of 
Eenan^s dictum, or was his widening progress 
henceforth in no way to weaken his now power- 
ful influence? 

In spite of a season of bodily infirmity, duriug 
which, as usual, he had recourse to therapeutic 
methods, as little recognized by the "facultj^" as 
his methods of reform were recognized by that por- 
tion of society of which the medical profession was 
an integral j^art, the now un trammeled editor be- 
gan to cut loose from the one-reform idea and, 
"guided by no human authority," make still more 
rapidly for the open. Proclaiming as fiercely as 
ever the need of abolition and welcoming all shades 
of opinion to this "common ground," he proposed 
to advocate the cause of peace and utterly to 



AN AWAKENING PEOPLE 171 

repudiate the xirinciple of justifiable violence, liolii- 
ii)g tiiat the non-resistant tenets of the Quakers did 
not go far enough. His arguments on this thesis 
are a strange amalgam of Scriptural language and 
his own forcible editorial manner. In another, the 
constant and rather wearisome levying on Holy 
Writ would have been the veriest cant, but not in 
his case. When the fight was on, Garrison was an 
Old Testament mau and thought and wrote the 
sometimes clear and sometimes cloudy language of 
jjrophecy. There was, of a truth, nothing pacifica- 
tory in this incessant demand for peace ; the trumpet 
is a true weapon of war and the Garrisonian 
'''• dango7' tuharum''^ was strident, though his theme 
was the bringing of the Kingdom of God on earth 
as it is in heaven. Again, too, he pressed his de- 
maud for the rights of women '•^ to their utmost ex- 
tent." 

We find him later in the year trying to carry out 
some of his various and large undertakings. At 
Philadelphia, whither he had gone to attend the 
Annual Convention of Americau Anti-Slavery 
Women, ''our tongues," he writes, ''were as busy 
as our hearts were warm," for "Abolition, Peace, 
Woman's Eights, Holiness, were the fruitful and 
important themes of the evening." * 

It must be admitted that the influence of John 
Humphrey Noyes, leader of the Oneida Community 
and herald of the doctrine of Perfectionism, was 
strong upon Garrison and brought him trouble. He 
was even charged, absolutely without foundation, 

1 Life, Vol. II, p. 211. 



172 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

Avith cherishing the least savory of the doctriues of 
Noyes, an elastic conception of the sexual relation. 
Garrison found it possible to be as eclectic in his 
discipleship as he was in his recourse to medicine — 
he was, in fact, not of the right temper for a dis- 
ciple. The truth is, that in advocating these various 
l^hases of a universal social redemption, he was only 
following the tendency of his daj^ and generation. 
The Brook Farm movement was beginning to shape 
itself in cozy Boston parlors. Dissatisfaction with 
things as they are was in the air, like a brooding 
tempest ; the older Unitarianism was under criticism ; 
women were claiming their privileges and sometimes 
their rights. If old things were not actually pass- 
ing away, certainly new things were rapidly assert- 
ing themselves. A few years hence theories, 
especially those of Cousin and Fourier, — the some- 
what earlier influx of German thought having in 
great measure spent itself without much effect, — 
were to have a large hearing and some following. 
The couutiy at last was rapidly arriving at self- 
contemplation in political and national affairs, while 
the more intellectual portion of American society 
was in agitation over problems not a few. It is no 
wonder, then, and not a matter for unkind criticism 
that Garrison felt the powerful ferment about him. 
It is a marvel that he kept his head so well and his 
abolition course so true in all this welter of ideas, 
for he was prone to start off in any inviting new 
direction. Fortunately for the greatest of his 
various causes, he belonged to none of the ^Ssets" 
in Boston society then more interested in the vague 



AN AWAKEKING PEOPLE 173 

theories of the Newness than in the concrete fact that 
there were hundreds of thousands of human beings 
on American soil in a state of thralldom. A bull in 
a china shop would have adapted himself fully as 
well to the situation as Garrison, raging to break 
the chains of slavery, would have comported himself 
in a Transcendental seance. 

The year 1838 witnessed the disappearance of 
the apprenticeship system, especially in Jamaica, 
the completing act of British emancii)ation in the 
West Indies. It also saw another outbreak of 
violence in America comparable to the Lovejoy 
tragedy in intensity, but more significant as happen- 
ing in a far more civilized place than Alton, 111. 
This was the destruction on May 17, 1838, of Penn- 
sylvania Hall in the well-ordered city of Philadel- 
phia. In this occurrence, so eventful in anti- 
slavery annals. Garrison, still in poor health, was a 
participant. The hall, built largely by Abolition 
money, was intended to be as true a temple of 
freedom as Faneuil Hall itself, which meant, as a 
matter of course, that its walls were to resound with 
extravagance, violent utterance, abuse, as well as 
with the real spirit of liberty. It was capable of 
holding large audiences and had architectural merit. 
Several days of anti -slavery discussion had been 
planned for and most of the principal fighters, men 
and women, were gathered in the new edifice of 
freedom. 

In answer to the dedicatory address by David 
Paul Brown, Garrison, who found the orator un- 
sound on the question of immediatism and a man 



174 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

of gentle measures iu regard to the whole matter of 
slavery, showed his exceptional qualifications for 
being '^uncomfortable/^ when it was borne in upon 
him to be so. ''If there be a neck to that dis- 
course," he proclaimed, "let a stone be tied around 
it, and let it be sunk in the depth of the sea." 
Thus he proposed to rebaptize the hall and "wash 
out this stain of reproach." It was a perfect in- 
stance of his inability to fellowship with any one 
who iDreached half-measures or who showed a lack 
of absolute principles. An extremist himself, he 
probablj^ always had more man-to-man respect for 
slaveholders than for the safe and sane men of that 
time. 

The next day there had gathered an immense 
audience, among which were many Quakers, and 
naturally a preponderance of women, doubtless 
keyed up with expectancy after Garrison's boldness 
of the preceding day. Xo sooner had Garrison 
finished his address than a mob rushed in, and, 
finding nothing particular to do except to insult so 
large a body of women, rushed out again. It then 
began to use the usual insensate arguments of the 
inarticulate, — brickbats. Maria Weston Chapman, 
one of the noblest of all Garrison's adherents, ad- 
dressed the meeting with that sui)erb courage 
peculiar to women of such rare character as hers. 
She was followed by Angelina Grimke, just wedded 
to Theodore Dwight Weld, one of the most devoted 
of Abolitionists. With an equal cou7\age she re- 
joiced that the "stupid repose" of Philadelphia 
had been aroused. Lucretia Mott and Abby Kelley, 



AN AWAKENING PEOPLE 175 

other Abolitionists destined to become well known 
in the strife, next spoke. A day session of the 
Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women 
followed on Thursday, but in the evening the build- 
ing was set on fire and entirely destroyed, the mob 
refusing to allow the fire-engines to do their work. 
The A uti- Slavery office was also destroyed, together 
with jDractically all of Benjamin Lundy's belong- 
ings. It was probably well for Garrison that he 
kept out of the way on that eventful night and 
was safely on the road to New England the next 
morning. 

Evil is epidemic among the unthinking, and it is 
therefore not strange that only a strong military 
force, armed with ball cartridges, prevented a 
meditated assault on the just finished Marlborough 
Chapel in Boston, which was dedicated on May 24th, 
though, according to Garrison, in a rather tame 
fashion. Mayor John Swift of Philadelphia was as 
ineffectual in controlling riot as Mayor Lyman, but 
Mayor Samuel A. Eliot, father of the great president 
of Harvard University, who, when an alderman, had 
by his moral indifference to the conduct of the Gar- 
rison mob converted Dr. Henry I. Bowditch into 
a red-hot Abolitionist, now stayed threatened vio- 
lence as firmly as he had quelled the fierce Irish row 
known as the Broad Street Riot just about a year 
previous to the Marlborough Chapel occurrence. 

The Life by the Garrisons draws a close parallel 
between the Philadelphia and the Boston mob of 
1835, and points out that in both cases violence was 
directed against assemblages of women. The Amer- 



176 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKI80N 

ican miud was Jiot ready in the late thirties, nor 
is it ready yet, to consider as of overwhelming im- 
portance the comi)lete emancix)atiou of women from 
entanglements in part of their own making. But 
there were signs then of more than usual flurry in 
their behalf, just as there was excitement over 
many things. It would have been strange indeed 
had not Garrison been influenced by this particular 
phase of the general Newness. Action rather than 
abstract thought was characteristic of the women 
with whom he was associated. Of singular purity 
of character himself, he was well adapted to make 
helpful and inspiring friendships in either sex, with 
no basis other than a common and absorbing cause. 
But just as other men were unprepared for his 
radicalism in other ways, so were they unprepared 
to welcome women officially at any feast of reason 
on anti-slavery matters. Naturally enough, the 
clergy, falling back on tradition, were the most 
firmly opposed to innovations. Six orthodox min- 
isters hastened to withdraw from membership in the 
New England Anti-Slavery Convention because of 
the passage of a resolution inviting women ^Ho be- 
come members and participate in the proceed- 
ings.'^^ Garrison, In answer to Whittier, who so 
far agreed with these malcontents as to hold that 
the admission of women had ''nothing to do with 
the professed object of the convention," admitted 
that a discussion of women's rights was not relevant, 
but that the '' i^ng^^ should not be applied to women 
''when they iiffirm that their consciences demand 

' Life, Vol. II, p. 220. 



AN AWAKENING PEOPLE 177 

that they should speak." Such seems to have been 
the inception of a schism which was, in union with 
other dissensions, to bring trouble upon all Garri- 
sonianism. 

In spite of his indifferent health, mainly induced 
by a scrofulous condition, Garrison was so far from 
weary in well doing that he had prepared himself 
to break a lance with the American Peace Society 
and all similar bodies which seemed to him to be 
following an equivocal course. During the summer 
of 1838 plans were formulating for a convention, 
which was held at Marlborough Chapel in Boston 
on September 18-20th. Peace was its avowed ob- 
ject ; but contentious harangues with the only 
weapon, offensive or defensive, permissible to its 
members, were to be expected. Abolitionists were 
in the majority, but the more conservative were 
there also, among them the Eev. Ezra Stiles Gan- 
nett, Channing's colleague, a godly but inelastic 
man. Garrison by his own admission '^ grieved him 
sorely" in replying to this clergyman's objection 
to a resolution that no man and no government has 
a right to take life on any x^retext. 

The practical side of Garrison was shown at the 
opening of the meeting by a suggestion that each 
person i)resent should write ''his" or ''her" 
name on a slip to prevent mistakes in making up 
the roll ; by this shrewd oj^ening he brought the 
women delegates into the privileges of the conven- 
tion. Presently the Eev. George C. Beckwith, lofty 
in the councils of the American Peace Society, was 
called to order by Abby Kelley— a high-handed 



178 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISOK 

proceeding which led to the speedily-accepted 
resignations of several outraged brethren. 

Garrison, as chairman of a committee of nine, 
wrote the constitution and declaration of sentiments, 
both of which, after some animated debate, were 
adopted. The declaration was so extreme that 
Wendell Phillips and Edmund Quincy, with several 
other well-known Abolitionists, felt unable to vote 
for it. Garrison himself felt the serenest confidence 
that he had drawn a great paper and that mankind 
would eventually ^'hail the Twentieth of September 
with more exultation and gratitude than Americans 
now do the Fourth of July. ' ^ It stood out against 
*' allegiance to any human government^' and against 
all wars and ^'all preparations for war." It pro- 
claimed that it was unlawful to bear arms or to hold 
a military office, to become a member of any legisla- 
tive or judicial body, or to elect others as substitutes. 
So little was left in the world for the non-resistant 
actively to perform in the organic life of society that 
it seems a concession to the imperfection of human 
nature itself for a full right to have been granted to 
^' assail iniquity in high places and in low places.'^ 

The American Peace Society and its ally, the New 
York Peace Society, found the new " Non-Resistant 
Society," the outcome of the convention, as little to 
their liking as the Colonization Society found Gar- 
rison's earlier endeavors. 

The Liberator responded to the new advocacy of 
its editor, and into its columns had frequently to be 
squeezed something relating to peace and non-resist- 
ance, to the sacrifice of anti-slavery material. This 



AN AWAKENII^G PEOPLE 179 

was not to the complete satisfaction of some of its 
adherents. One friend writes that ' ' during the 
whole of this summer I have scarcely met a number 
in which there is not something which repels." 

Miss Weston, sister of the intrepid Mrs. Chapman, 
too wise to oppose, suggested a divorce of the two 
interests and the establishment of a new paper ; for 
* ' it is admitted by all, the doctrines of non-resist- 
ance are not identical with those of Abolition. ' ' The 
next year the J^on- Resistant, with Garrison on the 
editing committee and bearing the motto, ^'Eesist 
not Evil — Jesus Christ," came into existence, paid 
for itself for a time, and expired on June 29, 1842. 
The society, under the name of the New England 
Non- Resistance Society, ceased in 1849. 



CHAPTER VIII 

A HOUSE DIVIDING AGAINST ITSELF 

These closing years of the first decade of the 
campaign for immediate abolition show plainly 
that astonishing progress had been made. How far 
Garrisonianism, pure and simple, had to do with 
these results, it is not possible to determine with 
exactness. Other portions of the country, especially 
Ohio and its affiliated neighbors, Pennsylvania and 
New York, were bringing forward new men and 
new ideas or variations of the original simple plan 
to work, undivided and unattached to political 
machinery of any kind, for the freeing of the slaves. 
Every day of the year a new local anti -slavery or- 
ganization of some sort came into being. ^ The ec- 
clesiastical front was beginning to waver, especially 
in that vanguard of religious progress, the Methodist 
church. Men running for office were obliged to de- 
clare their convictions, or certainly their intentions, 
on the absorbing topic. There were evidences that 
some Abolitionists would welcome a fuller connec- 
tion with political activities, but the rank and file 
still held fast to the original working principle that 
party organization or political affiliation would in- 
jure the pristine integrity of the cause. Yet there 
was already a slight general movement toward the 

» Life, Vol. II, p. 143. 



A HOUSE DIVIDING AGAINST ITSELF 181 

acceptance of political method, as witness the pledges 
circulated in the city of Xew York, committing the 
signers not to ' ' vote for any man or rei^resentative 
to Congress who is not in favor of the immediate 
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia." 
At a convention in Worcester, Mass., in October, 
1838, there was claimed the right to form an anti- 
slavery party, while advising against it.' 

It must be admitted, however, that in spite of 
spasmodic signs of impatience, the Abolition move- 
ment, dogged and unremitting, was still wonder- 
fully coherent. The continual presentation of 
memorials to Congress hardened the pro-slavery 
heart as Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and grad- 
ually put the South on the offensive. Such was the 
sure working of the non-resistant influence in the 
Abolition cause. To offset this memorializing of 
Congress, the effectual closure of 1837 was passed, 
denying the right of slaves to petition. Then fol- 
lowed John Mercer Patton's gag, denying the 
presentation or reading of any petition for the 
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, 
which was reaffirmed by a gag rule later in 1838. 

Eemote from these thickening contentions at 
Washington and elsewhere, the anti-slavery leader 
saw the year 1838 close with whispers of dissension 
and with a growing sentiment abroad that he was 
an enemy to some cherished religions ideals. Prob- 
ably the grosser charges that he was of lax views as 
to what still goes under the euphemistic name 
^'morality'' were believed, if believed at all, by 
1 Life, Vol. II, p. 245. 



182 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

very few persons. It became necessary for his 
friends to defend liim from the charge of being a 
breaker of the Sabbath (tliough in fact he wanted 
seven Sabbaths a week), and of being an enemy to 
Christianity, when he was trying or thought that he 
was trying, to put the principles of its Founder into 
practice. The Liberafor, now approaching its ninth 
volume, was still making a struggle to live. Knapp, 
the printer and publisher, was deeply involved be- 
cause of his attempt to carry on a publication bureau 
in addition to the paper. Again Garrison was set 
on his feet by a committee appointed to control the 
Liberator'' s accounts. Oliver Johnson was made a 
sort of editorial adjunct to him, while his own hands 
were left as free as ever. Free hands, however, will 
not necessarily enable a man to repel a rising tide. 

Still he continued tireless as a debater and re- 
sourceful as an editor. He had the ever-sharpened 
retorts of the controversialist and was able to meet 
all arguments with keenness, logic, imperturbable 
control, and generally with good-nature. His 
armory of Scriptural phraseology was always full of 
burnished weapons, and he seemed to have well 
fortified the abolition defenses against the assaults 
of counter argument. Abolition was a religious, a 
moral contest, a veritable Holy War. The devil 
was not to be fought with fire or with his own 
methods. The ultimate enlightenment of the slave- 
holder by the persistent influence of the diviner spirit 
working through such humble instruments as him- 
self and his followers was no small part of his pro- 
gram. He believed in the foolishness of preaching, 



A HOUSE DIVIDI:N^G against itself 183 

iu the final triumph of good, but it does not appear 
that he clearly saw how the i^roblem would 
eventually work out. That it did Avork out by 
means of bloody war and incalculable sacrifice of 
life and property was because, so he and the old-time 
Garrisonians held, the ploughshares and the prun- 
ing hooks of non-resistance and moral suasion were 
beaten into the swords and spears of political con- 
troversy and action. The great fallacy was to sup- 
pose that human nature, or that part of it coming 
into a fuller understanding of itself in the United 
States of America some seventy years ago, was so 
constituted that it could or would follow for long the 
path of pleasantness and peace and arrive at a pre- 
destined goal without political contest. This nation 
was born in strife, and when the deadlier sort ceased 
for a generation, men turned inevitably to political 
contention. It is still a marvel that even an 
enthusiast like Garrison did not recognize the par- 
ticular make-up of this human nature that he was 
trying so hard to bend to his purpose. He lacked 
the sagacity of the later politicians who first made 
the people see things their way and then led them 
to suppose that the leaders were only the interpre- 
ters of the popular will. The ^' Peter Sterlings" 
were not yet at hand. The next two years will show 
the issue of a fight which, after much skirmishing, 
had really begun. 

Even his most profound admirers will not attempt 
to say that William Lloyd Garrison was not dicta- 
torial, sometimes as a speaker, sometimes as an 
editor, and more often than not as an organizer. A 



184 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

politician may couciliate, a dictator must have his 
say. He must naturally have a strong hand on the 
seat of power, but he must look out for his provinces, 
where unrest often begins and spreads centreward. 
In the East, in New England, he kept his supremacy 
in spite of dissident Tracys and Phelpses and their 
following ; he seemed to combat successfully the 
various sectaries and those who would cramp a 
quasi-religious movement into narrow channels ; in 
spite of much feeling, expressed or silent, the 
public activity of women in the anti-slavery cause 
was growing as he sincerely wished it to grow. 
But outside of a considerably wide territory of 
which New England was the most vital part, his 
control, which depended so much on his personality 
and actual presence, was not so sure. In what then 
passed for the Near West, in Central New York, 
there was no such severe discipline as in Boston, 
and so it fell out that non-resistance, a complete 
withdrawal from political action, was not an ac- 
ceptable doctrine in the outermost zone of Garrison's 
influence. Perhaps if he had lived in an era of 
special railroad cars and touring motors, he might 
have held Utica as firmly as he still held Boston 
and Providence, but i^erhaps not ; for sooner or 
later he had to reach a democracy very well satisfied 
with its own methods and loving politics as the 
common stimulation of the life of the country. He 
did not win attention and rouse thought, as Lincoln 
did, by discoursing on equal terms in country stores 
with thinking but undisciplined men, every one a 
politician. Non-political action might be success- 



A HOUSE DIVIDING AGAINST ITSELF 185 

fully driven home in Marlborougli Chapel or in the 
parlor of some Abolitionist's family, but it did not 
warm the anti-slavery blood as far west as Utica, 
when Garrison was not there to push his argument 
or to kindle hearts with his manly beauty and his 
moral fervor. 

The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, which 
the year previous (1839) had paid into the treasury 
of the American Anti-Slavery Society more money 
than was collected from the whole state of New 
York, more than all of Pennsylvania and the rest of 
New England combined, and five times as much as 
Ohio,^ was slightly behind in its guaranty of $10,000. 
This gave a chance for the parent society to insist 
that Massachusetts be opened to its own solicitors of 
funds. The annual meeting of the Massachusetts 
Society was held on January 23, 1839, and was 
largely attended. The leader of an opposition, 
bound this time to make itself felt, was Henry B. 
Stanton, one of the students who had withdrawn 
from Lane Theological Seminary, later the husband 
of a more famous wife, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. 
He was then in the pay of the executive committee 
of the American Anti-Slavery Society and was not 
in sympathy with non-resistance. Garrison had al- 
ready sensed the plan to change the managers of the 
society and to crush the Liberator by starting a new 
weekly official organ in Massachusetts. Several 
clergymen, Torrey, St, Clair, and Colver, were the 
ringleaders of the scheme to unhorse the unmanage- 
able editor, and they were sore amazed when they 
1 Life, Vol. II, p. 261. 



186 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

found themselves exposed in advance by the Libera- 
tor ^ which was ever alert for a newspaper '* scoop." 
The Eev. Mr. Phelps went so far as to pronounce 
Garrison '' a wicked man " on account of this exhi- 
bition of journalistic enterprise. The disaffected 
clergymen were now beginning to call Garrison 
tyrannical and spoke of his galling ^^ yoke "and 
"brassy brow" without much reserve. Even the 
sober-minded Goodell from a distance dubbed him 
a '^ Napoleon." Stanton at this meeting, in urging 
the need of a new paper, said : ^'On the subject of 
peace, perhaps, he [Mr. Garrison] is nearer right 
than I am. But he has lowered the standard of 
Abolition." He then abruptly asked : ''Mr. Gar- 
rison, do you or do you not believe it a sin to go to 
the polls'?" ''Sin for me.'" was the reiterated 
answer of the adroit master of polemics, who the 
next day drew a resolution, afterward adopted, to 
the effect that Abolitionists who felt called by a 
sense of duty to vote, and failed to do so when there 
was a chance to aid the slave by going to the polls, 
were "recreant to their high professions and un- 
worthy of the name they bear." Surely Garrison 
had a way of showing his enemies how shrewdly he 
might play politics if he had a mind to ! 

The opposition, thus routed, were still intent 
on starting the MassacJmsetts AboUtionisty "devoted 
exclusively to the discussion of slavery," and with 
Stanton temporarily in charge. The first number 
appeared on February 7th, and the price was one 
dollar a year, as against the Liberator^ s cost of two 
dollars and fifty cents. Friends of the Liberator 



A HOUSE DIVIDING AGAINST ITSELF 187 

rallied to its support, new money was subscribed or 
brought in, and its purposes were upheld. In just 
three weeks after the annual meeting above de- 
scribed, the executive committee of the main society 
notified the Massachusetts Society that its own 
agents would henceforth attend to collections in the 
state, a step which seems to have been almost 
punitive in its intent. Stanton, Lewis Tappan, 
and James G. Birney appeared at the quarterly 
meeting of the Massachusetts Society to represent 
the attitude of the American Society, but the local 
board's action was overwhelmingly sustained, and 
by the 1st of May the money in arrears was raised. 

A pledge was redeemed and promises were made 
good, but nothing essential was thus settled. Gar- 
rison, writing to his wife on May 2d, says: ''I 
anticipate a breaking up of our whole organization. 
But my mind is calm and i^eaceful." In spite 
of his misgivings, he had been as active as ever, for 
on March 23d had appeared the first number of the 
Cradle of Liberty, a sort of weekly digest of the 
anti-slavery portion of the Liberator, for seventy- 
five cents a year, frankly intended to ^' hedge up 
the way of the Abolitionist.^^ ^ The paper lasted a 
year and four months with a good circulation and 
was succeeded by the Monthly Offering. 

It was not Garrison's intention to go to the 
anniversary meeting of the American Anti-Slavery 
Society held on May 7-10, 1839, partly on account 
of the expense ; the opening day, however, found 
him there, with the "flower of Massachusetts Aboli- 

^Life, Vol. II, p. 285. 



188 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEIS0:N' 

tionism." Resourceful as ever, he managed to 
secure a ten minutes' limit to the speeches and, 
after prolonged discussion and in spite of the 
reactionary clergy, the admission of women dele- 
gates. He successfully moved several resolves to 
the effect that Abolitionists ought to help such men 
as will ''advocate the repeal of every local enact- 
ment by which the aid of the i)ublic authority is 
lent to the supi^ort of slavery " ; and that no mem- 
ber should be excluded from the society who had 
conscientious scruples against some of the measures 
favored, ''as proper for the advancement of the 
anti-slavery cause.'' This was accomplished in 
spite of Birney's efforts, previous to the meeting, to 
show the absurdity of non-voters sending petitions 
to Congress or urging others to vote and of his at- 
tempt, at the meeting, to carry a resolve to the ef- 
fect that it was inconsistent with the duty of Aboli- 
tionists under the Constitution to "maintain that 
the elective franchise ought not to be used by 
Abolitionists to advance the cause of emancipa- 
tion." ' 

With every important attempt of the executive 
committee circumvented and his own basic doctrines 
sustained, it is no wonder that Garrison was tempo- 
rarily cheered. Impartial minds, however, at this 
remote day, not sharing the fervor of his exaltation, 
do not find it easy precisely to understand the atti- 
tude of a man who would not and could not con- 
scientiously throw a ballot in the cause of anti- 
slavery, but who found it proper to urge others, 

» Life, Vol. II, p. 299. 



A HOUSE DIVIDIKG AGAINST TISELF 189 

through formal declarations, to cast their votes. 
What wonder is it that some, with purposes as lofty 
as his own, such as Birney, Elizur Wright, and the 
Tapx>ans, could find in this inconsistency a note of 
self- righteousness or a willingness to see a cause 
prosx)er by methods impossible to Garrison himself ? 
Whatever opinion may be come at, relative to his 
thus making a scapegoat of fellow Abolitionists 
while his own ' ' x^^J'f^ctionism " remained unsullied, 
there is no doubt that Garrison did find it morally 
possible to use politics at conventions and meetings, 
while he scorned honestly and fervently the evasive- 
ness of Whig and Democrat alike. After all, the 
main defense for Garrison must be his own : that he 
believed in divine not human government ; that he 
did not push his non-resistant doctrine as an Aboli- 
tionist ; and that he wished to leave membership in 
all anti-slavery societies, the parent society in par- 
ticular, untrammeled by requirements as to sex or 
sects or political action or anything else. 

On May 29th, the day following the assembling 
of the Kew England Anti-Slavery Convention, the 
Massachusetts Abolition Society was organized, with 
Elizur Wright and the Eev. Charles T. Torrey as 
the two secretaries. The admission of women to 
membership in the convention was the ostensible 
cams belli, but the plan to make a schism in Massa- 
chusetts seems to have been carefully considered, 
^ with a view to the approval of the American Society. 
One more gap in the once solid anti-slavery senti- 
ment opened when the National Convention of 
Abolitionists, meeting in Albany on the last day of 



190 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKBISON 

July, managed to snub Garrison by refusing to 
admit women as delegates and by failing to entertain 
his resolution in opi)osition to any projected plan 
for the nomination by Abolitionists of presidential 
or vice-presidential candidates. Futile as this con- 
vention proved to be, on the whole it did show a 
turn toward political activity and the possible in- 
ception of a third party. Garrison greatly dreaded 
such a movement, largely because a growing chance 
for maintaining an anti-slavery balance of power 
between the two great parties would then be des 
troyed. Moral and religious objections were also 
strongly urged by him with his usual vehemence 
and clearness of diction. The sentiment at this 
time in Ohio proved to be decidedly against a third 
party and in favor of the original methods of an un- 
restricted anti slavery line of action. Stanton had 
attended the Western Eeserve Convention held in 
October and seemed to fall in with the **Ohio 
idea" ; but it was his real intention to '^ wait till 
both parties had nominated, and then, if Clay and 
Van Buren are the men, call a great convention to 
consider the wisdom of nominating.'' * 

Shortly afterward, Garrison, hearing of a letter 
written by Elizur Wright to Stanton, forced Wright 
to print it in the Aholitionist This letter pleaded 
hard for a '^decided step toward presidential 
candidates" at the Ohio convention, urging among 
other reasons that if such a step were not taken, 
** our organization here is a gone case. It has been, 
entre nous, shockingly mismanaged." So, up to the 
1 Life, Vol. II, p. 315. 



A HOUSE DIVIDING AGAINST ITSELF 191 

close of 1839, nothing definite had resulted in favor 
of the Third-Party movement, although Birney, rep- 
resenting New York, and F. J. Le Moyne, Pennsyl- 
vania, had found it expedient to decline a nomi- 
nation for the presidency and vice- presidency re- 
spectively, tendered them by a convention held in 
Warsaw, N. Y., in the month of November. 

Intent thus far to proclaim a gospel adapted to 
human nature as it ought to be, rather than a policy 
that the American democracy, as constituted, might 
understand and possibly follow, the undaunted 
editor, still youug but no longer youthful, began 
the year 1840 with his battle nearly won. There 
was opposition, but he had not been dispossessed 
of supremacy. The Third-Party movement, though 
still a small affair, was already beyond his control. 
New Organization, for so the seceders from his 
immediate following came to be called, continued 
their activities, against which he seemed able to 
hold his ground.^ But the details of these con- 
tentions are not of sufficient importance to be re- 
hearsed, especially since they differ in no essential 
way from the various strifes of the preceding year. 
Of interest to Garrison, if not to the country at 
large, was the ''National Anti-Slavery Convention 
for Independent Nomination" which met in early 
April at Albany, and nominated Birney and Thomas 
Earle of Pennsylvania for President and Vice-Presi- 
dent. Pennsylvania and Ohio sent none of the one 

^ Accordinjr to Dr. Edward E. Hale, the two factions were 
dubbed ''Old Ogs " and "New Ogs." Memoirs of a Hundred 
Years, Vol. II, p. 129. 



1<JL> WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON 

huudred and twenty-four delegates, eighty-six per 
c«nt. of whom came from the state of New York. 
A mouth later these eaudidates were again nomi- 
nated by a couveutiou which followed the annual 
meeting of the American Society in New York City. 
Then came into formal being the small, ineffectual 
Liberty party, which by strange alliances x^roved 
to be the grandparent of the Eepublican party that 
seventeen years later was to make itself felt, and in 
four years more to carry the country against a di- 
vided Democracy. '^It must be based," wrote 
Henry C. Wright, *'on the divinity of the ballot 
box, or it is useless. ' ' 

By this time Garrison had gained enemies of more 
consequence than a handful of Massachusetts clergy- 
men, and among them William Goodell, a sane, dry 
man, who had opposed, with balanced mind, the 
''Clerical Appeal" and the ''Non- Resistant" doc- 
trines. If Goodell was not luminous, and if he took 
a sort of acrid pleasure in defining the ''i^roper 
position of females," he was at least clear-headed. 
To-day his Slavery and Anti- Slavery ^ published in 
1853, is about as definite and intelligible a state- 
ment as has been written of the varying situations 
of the movement. He had made up his mind that 
'' Abolition and Non-Resistance can no more walk 
together than can Abolition and Colonization," ' 
and predicted the practical extinction of the 
American Society if the Garrisonian forces should 
prevail at the May meeting in New York. In this 
meeting assembled more than one thousand dele- 
» Life, Vol. II, p. 345. 



A HOUSE DIVIDING AGAINST ITSELF 193 

gates, fully four hundred aud fifty of them coming 
from Massachusetts and elsewhere in New England 
on a Sound boat, specially chartered in the interests 
of Garrison. About one hundred more friendly 
delegates went by other routes. Garrison had in 
the assembly a working majority of some ninety 
votes. There must have been scattered through all 
the free states, at this time, between one and two 
hundred thousand anti-slavery adherents, with 
strong abolition tendencies, a majority of whom 
really knew little or nothing, if Goodell is correct, 
of ' ' what was going forward. ' ' One state effectually 
controlled an assemblage of national proportions. 
In the wicked game of politics, which Garrison ab- 
horred, this would be called packing a convention. 
The New Organization, doubtless ready enough to 
use the same tactics, had it possessed the votes, 
figured inconspicuously. Arthur Tappan was re- 
elected president, but declined to serve, and even 
kept away from the sessions. The meeting con- 
firmed the appointment by the vice-president, 
Francis Jackson, of Miss Abby Kelley on the 
business committee ; thereupon Lewis Tappan, 
Amos A. Phelps and Charles W. Denison refused 
to serve on this committee, and the two former 
asked those ''who had voted against the a ppoint- 
'ment of women to meet and form a new society.'' i 
Thus came to be formed the American and Foreign 
Anti-Slavery Society, the first presidency of which 
was accepted by Arthur Tappan. Lucretia Mott, 
Lydia Maria Child and Maria Chapman were put 

^ Life, Yol II, p. 349. 



194 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEKISON 

on the executive comuiittee of the old society. It 
was then voted that by its constitution, the society did 
not attempt to determine whether it was or was not 
the duty of any member to go to the polls. Any sup- 
port of the candidacy of Van Buren or Harrison 
for the presidency was discountenanced, and the 
course of the Liberty party at Albany disapproved 
of by resolution. Birney was thus ranked, not as 
a man but politically, with the two other candidates. 
It is no marvel that some of the minority must have 
felt with Chaucer's Chauntecleer that it was a case 
of mulier est liominis confusio. Some weeks before 
this meeting the executive committee had nominally 
transferred to the New York City Anti-Slavery 
Society the Emancipator^ until then the official 
organ of the society. To this proceeding Garrison 
objected and held that the new holder was bound to 
restore the paper. It is evident from the trans- 
action that the executive committee, forecasting 
defeat, was determined not to allow the Emancipator 
to get into the hands of any new committee which 
would proceed to convert the paper into a true 
Garrisonian organ. The price asked for a return of 
the paper into the National Society's keeping was 
prohibitive, and within a month plans were on foot 
to start the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Of the 
first number of the new official organ, Garrison, 
with his usual magnanimity, says : '^ It is a beauti- 
fully printed sheet, and makes a fine appearance. I 
am afraid, however, that it will cripple the circula- 
tion of the Liberator J by being put at so low a rate." ' 
1 Life, Vol. II, p. 389. 



A HOUSE DIVIDING AGAINST ITSELF 196 

At first it was edited by various members of 
the society, but in 1841, Lydia Maria Child as- 
sumed charge. Like the Liberator the Standard out- 
lived the Civil War, during which period Oliver 
Johnson and Edmund Quincy were the efficient 
editors. 

As a final note of triumph, it was voted by the 
American Society, before adjourning, to send Gar- 
rison and his devoted adherent, N. P. Eogers, 
C. L. Kemond, an accomplished man of color, and 
Lucretia Mott as delegates to the World's Anti- 
Slavery Convention to be opened in London on June 
12, 1840. 

Notwithstanding that the majority made ''clean 
work of everything . . . with crashing una- 
nimity," to use Garrison's words, and that the 
excitement had been keen, it is noticeable that 
these sounds of tumult seem not to have penetrated 
far westward. Even in those days, the West was 
settling matters in its own way and was not a 
dependency, socially or politically, on the East, to 
which, however, it still looked with respect in 
intellectual matters. The ''proi)er position of 
females" did not much concern a wide territory 
where, from the beginning, women had exhibited 
equally with men the fortitude and self-sacrifice 
necessary to subdue the forces of a wilderness. The 
slight impression that this schism in the American 
Anti-Slavery Society caused outside of the North- 
ern Atlantic states deepens one's conviction, in 
considering the anti-slavery movement from the 
start, that the various communities in western New 



196 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

York and all those west of Penusylvanla went 
about the grave business of abolition largely in 
their own way. Garrison's was certainly a name 
in Ohio, as it was elsewhere, and he exercised a 
potent moral influence, but did not there determine 
policies or occasion feuds and cabals to disturb the 
momentum of a great cause. Anti-slavery was, in 
fact, organically democratic rather than federalistic, 
and did not tend especially toward centralization. 
The intense individualism of many of its followers 
would in a measure explain this. Perhaps we may 
better call it congregational in its structure so far as 
the cohesion and the interdependence of its con- 
tinually increasing societies or organizations are 
concerned. 

If detailed biographical narrative were the pur- 
pose of this book, it would be a pleasant task to 
follow Mr. Garrison and his companions across the 
water in the ''fine large ship Columhus,^^ which 
sailed for Liverpool on May 22d ; accompany them to 
London and share the excitement of the convention, 
which they reached on June 17th, five days after it 
had begun ; and finally to learn more of their fore- 
gathering with some of the distinguished men and 
women, who were keeping the spirit of reform 
ablaze in England. 

But, eventful as was this journey in the per- 
sonal life of the great Abolitionist, it must suffice 
to give here only its essential incidents. Anx- 
iously leaving his wife, who was within a short 
time of another confinement, he did not fail to im- 
prove the occasion of his voyage by commiserating 



A HOUSE DIVIDING AGAINST ITSELF 197 

the condition of the sailors, as well he might in 
those days, administering '' burning rebukes "to 
the sinful passengers who passed the time "swear- 
ing, drinking and smoking" — equal offenses in his 
eyes — and not failing to driv^e home the horrors of 
slavery and all oppressions of humanity. Kemond, 
on account of his color, was sent forward by the 
captain, a Virginian, to the steerage ; here he was 
joined by William Adams, a Scotch Quaker from 
Ehode Island and a delegate, who was penalized for 
objecting to the harsh treatment of a sailor. Non- 
Eesistant doctrine seems to have had its valuable 
side for some of the passengers in the good ship 
Columbus. 

By decision of the British and Foreign Anti- 
Slavery Society, no tickets of admission to Free- 
masons' Hall had been issued to the women 
delegates. On the opening of the convention, 
Wendell Phillips, representing the Massachusetts 
Anti-Slavery Society which had sent, as delegates, 
among others, Harriet Martineau, Maria Chapman, 
Lydia Maria Child, Abby Kelley, Emily Winslow 
and Mrs. Wendell Phillips, moved the appointment 
of a committee instructed to include the names of 
all* persons bearing credentials from any anti- 
slavery society. The Philadelphia Anti-Slavery 
Society had sent as delegates Lucretia Mott and 
four other women, all Quakers except one. Both 
American societies, in so doing, had acted with full 
knowledge that a member of the executive commit- 
tee of the British society had discouraged the in- 
clusion of any women as delegates. Dr. John 



198 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

Bowring aud William Henry Asliurst were the 
most prominent Englishmen to support Phillips, 
who ^'refused to have a World's Convention 
measured by an English yardstick." George 
Thompson, not showing the same implacable spirit 
on his own soil as he did in America, urged that 
the motion be withdrawn. The British clergy, 
leaning back heavily on Holy Writ and Saint Paul, 
sparkled tersely on woman's proper sphere. The 
motion was lost, but Mr. Phillips did not bolt the 
convention. Garrison on his arrival decided to do 
nothing to disturb the remaining three days of the 
session, and sat in the gallery— a very Hamlet, 
watching from above a drama of which he was the 
chief and necessary character. He must have been 
cheered by the thought, for he had abundant fun in 
his disposition, that Polonius would be fully repre- 
sented by the New Organizationists, who had 
without doubt inspired the British society to its 
conservative stand. He could not be lured from 
this coign of vantage, but did not lack company, 
for on the second day Lady Byron sought out both 
him and Remond. Bowring had Garrison to 
breakfast and Miss Martineau thought he was 
^' quite right to sit in the gallery." The great 
Daniel O'Connell, a rock on all anti-slavery mat- 
ters, sided with the banished ones, calling the 
exclusion "a cowardly sacrifice of principle to a 
vulgar prejudice." 

In spite of this episode, which colored the whole 
convention and tended to minimize the purpose for 
which it met, there were brought out good anti- 



A HOUSE DIVIDIJS^G AGAINST ITSELF 199 

slavery sentiment and searching criticism of the 
supine attitude of the churches. If women proved 
unacceptable in their councils to the slow-paced 
British mind, the English were not lacking in hos- 
pitality, and heard Eemond, late from an Ameri- 
can steerage cabin, with enthusiasm. ''Prejudice 
against color is unknown here," Garrison had the 
pleasure of writing to his wife, by this time the 
mother of a "fine boy," Wendell Phillips Garri- 
son, who inherited many of the noble qualities of 
his parents.^ 

Meeting in a pleasant way with Amelia Opie, 
Elizabeth Pease, Elizabeth Fry, the Hewitts, 
O'Connell, Thomas Fowell Buxton, Eobert Owen, 
Samuel Gurney, the Duchess of Sutherland and her 
brother Lord Morpeth, Benjamin Haydou, the artist, 
and other notable and worthy persons. Garrison's 
stay rapidly drew to an end, and he sailed back on 
August 4th, but not until he had made an excursion 
to Edinburgh, where he addressed an immense tem- 
perance meeting. He found time to write a long 
letter to Joseph Pease, the English Quaker Aboli- 
tionist, in which he elaborated his doctrine of peace 
and the use of moral and religious measures for the 
suppression of evil. He also urged England to pur- 
chase only cotton raised by free labor, and to keep 
up the policy for seven years, at the expiration of 
which period ' ' American slavery would be peace- 
ably abolished." 

*He died in 1905. after an editorship of forty years on The 
Nation, where he always displayed a patience and a sense of jus- 
tice, equal to his father's, as well as an ability wholly his own, 



200 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

Garrison thoroughly enjoyed himself in Scotland, 
which he seemed to i^refer to England ; for the fear- 
ful contrasts of luxury and grim want in England 
distressed his sympathetic soul. He had a few 
memorable days in Ireland, where he and his friends 
''spread a glorious contagion," according to Rich- 
ard Webb, an Irish Quaker and a printer of ster- 
ling worth as well as sound anti-slavery principles. 
For him and for his wife Hannah, Garrison cher- 
ished an affection which endured to their end. 
Their son, Alfred Webb, was also of the faith, and 
many years later was a valued contributor, under 
the signature of ''D. B.," to The Nation during the 
editorship of W. P. Garrison. 

Leaving Liverpool on August 4th, the never-rest- 
ing agitator was back in time to be present at a re- 
ception given him in Marlborough Chapel, Boston, 
on August 20th, ''the first instance of a mixed as- 
sembly [of white and black] being thus brought to- 
gether in Boston."^ He found large occasion, as 
many Americans have found before and since, to 
rejoice that he was born in the United States — in 
spite of the territorial magnificence of the Libera- 
tor'' s motto — where he could deal with the people 
and not with classes. He asked his colored friends 
to sympathize with the misery of other races, es- 
pecially with the "poor, oppressed Irish," for 
whom he always seemed to feel a particular solici- 
tude, though, as immigrants in this country, they 
made him but poor return for his loyalty. They 

. » Life, Vol. II, p. 407, 



A HOUSE DIVIDI:NG AGAUS'ST itself 201 

had serious problems of their own to absorb their 
attention during the anti- slavery period. 

Well-satisfied with his trip abroad, during which 
he had not failed to "sift into" other minds his 
various heterodoxies, particularly non-resistance 
and total abstinence. Garrison on his return had 
to face the fact that many Abolitionists, as sound as 
himself, had come to feel that the heated presiden- 
tial election of 1840 demanded more of them than 
zeal for ethical abstractions. Even the devoted 
Samuel E. Sewall deserted the field of political 
inaction. Many were Whigs or Democrats before 
they were baptized into Abolitionism and these felt 
tlie urgent call of party ; while some, deserting both 
early affiliations and the sincere milk of Garrison- 
ianism, turned toward the Liberty party. ''Polit- 
ically intoxicated,'^ the champion of an absolute 
standard in a shifting democracy was only too ready 
to call them. 

With the national society out of funds, its offi- 
cial 9rgan struggling hard for life, the Standard in 
extremities, and tried and true friends making ready 
to hie to the detested polls, one might suppose that 
Gai-rison was distressed by such ominous condi- 
tions ; but if he was, his letters and public utter- 
ances show no flinching. Even when his flat purse 
and its small contents disappeared after a thinly at- 
tended convention in Worcester, early in October, 
he, with that excellent humor of his, only said that 
he felt like an animal, ''denuded of its fur," and 
renewed his trust in the Lord. He did not neglect, 
however, to encourage the departure of John A. 



202 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

Collins, general agent of tbe Massachusetts So- 
ciety, to obtain money to replenish the anti-slavery 
finances. Collins was followed across the water by 
what seems even at this day like malice on the part 
of the Rev. Nathaniel Colver, and was met in Eng- 
land by the opposition of Captain Charles Stuart, 
now hostile to the Garrisonian program. 

Meanwhile Garrison had brought upon himself 
more odium of infidelity by becoming identified 
with a movement of a curiously mixed organization 
that set out to reach a spiritual princix)le and fun- 
damental truth in the field of denominational differ- 
ences. Through uncouth efforts in meetings or 
'* conventions," as all assemblages in those days 
seem to have been called, it invited free discussion 
of a jumble of religious and non-religious theories 
and fancies. Though this movement did not origi- 
nate with him, it found in Garrison a vigorous and 
most conspicuous adherent. It had its beginnings 
with the ''Friends of Christian Union,'' in a meet- 
ing at Groton, Mass. , in August, 1840, while Garri- 
son was on the Atlantic. Every person who had or 
thought he had an idea to contribute flung it into 
the bubbling cauldron of ''free discussion." 
Later the "Friends of Universal Eeform" decided 
to hold a second meeting in order to "examine the 
validity of the views which generally prevail in this 
country as to the divine appointment of the first day 
of the week as the Christian Sabbath, and to inquire 
into the origin, nature, and authority of the minis- 
try and the Church, as now existing." The result 
of the call was the Chardon Street Convention, held 



A HOUSE DIVIDING AGAINST ITSELF 203 

Kov^ember 17-19, 1840 ; it was the most famous of 
the many meetings at that temple of free discussion, 
the Chardon Street Chapel, in Boston. 

Ealph Waldo Emerson, who saw not too closely 
from his serene height the ironic and fantastic 
shows of human nature, was not too remote to poke 
benignant fun at the extravagancies then rife, even 
when he sympathized mildly with the principles 
underlying, and in this spirit of seraphic bantering 
he describes the gathering: *'The singularity and 
latitude of the summons drew together, from all 
parts of New England and also from the Middle 
States, men of every shade of opinion from the 
straitest orthodoxy to the wildest heresy, and many 
persons whose church was a church of one member 
only. A great variety of dialect and of costume 
was noticed ; a great deal of confusion, eccentricity, 
and freak appeared, as well as of zeal and enthu- 
siasm.' If the assembly was disorderly, it was pic- 
turesque. Madmen, madwomen, men with beards, 
Dunkers, Muggletonians, Come- outers, Groaners, 
Agrarians, Seventh-Day Baptists, Quakers, Aboli- 
tionists, Calvinists, Unitarians, and Philosophers, 
— all came successively to the top, and seized their 
moment, if not their hour, wherein to chide, or 
pray, or preach, or protest." ^ 

The proceedings of the convention, different in no 
essential way from other manifestations of the gen- 
eral restlessness then epidemic, would demand no 
mention in detail here were it not for the conspicu- 
ous part Garrison played during these three days of 
' Emerson, Lectures and Biographical Sketches, p. 351. 



204 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON^ 

discussion, — discussion without conclusion or the 
adoption of any resolution. Among the signers of 
the call were some names not identified with the 
old-time radicals, such as Theodore Parker and 
William Henry Channing, more representative of 
the Unitarian ''left'^ than of anything else ; George 
Kipley, then on the eve of his Brook Farm ven- 
ture ; James Eussell Lowell, just of age and through 
the Harvard Law School ; the poet Cranch j and as 
a. looker-on, Dr. Channing. The various conserva- 
tive points of view of the Sabbath as the one day of 
the week to be kei^t especially holy were fully rep- 
resented, while Garrison took the lead in advocat- 
ing the Sabbath-everyday heresy. ''There was 
less boring, on the whole, than we had a right to 
expect," writes Edmund Quincy of this deliberative 
assemblage of which no authoritative report exists. 
Father Taylor, one of the extraordinary and elo- 
quent personalities of the day in Boston, and Abby 
Folsom and Dr. Mellen, both mentally disturbed 
trouble-makers in all public gatherings where they 
were suffered to speak, used the full i)rivileges of a 
convention under no definite control. 

It is of interest to observe that when it was pro- 
posed to limit the argument to the discussion of the 
teachings of the Bible on the subject of the meet- 
ings, Garrison supported the motion, which failed 
of adoption. He argued that since the Bible was 
the only source from wliich any idea of a Sabbath, 
a church, or a ministry' could come, therefore the 
Bible alone must be the foundation for all con- 
sideration of the topics proposed. At the first 



A HOUSE DIVIDING AGAJNST ITSELF 205 

Cbardou Street conveution the Sabbath was the 
ouly subject discussed. The chief supporters of 
the divine authority for observing the first day of 
the week were two Abolitionist clergymen of the 
wing opposed to Garrison, the Rev. John Pierpont 
and the Rev. A. A. Phelps, his earlier fellow 
lecturer, for whose candor and logical power he 
had great respect. Garrison took the lead on the 
other side, on the ground that the coming of Jesus 
had abolished the duty of observing the Sabbath as 
being part of the ceremonial obligation of the Old 
Law. This law Jesus had come not to destroy but 
to fulfil by substituting for its formal requirements 
a higher spiritual obligation. The Christian, in 
Garrison's view, was bound to sanctify all days 
alike by sanctifying the whole of life. 

The Rev. Nathaniel Colver was among his ad- 
versaries at these meetings, and just after their 
close he sent two letters to members of the London 
Committee, not only, as has been seen, discrediting 
Collins, as agent of the Massachusetts society, but 
also charging Garrison with heading *'an infidel 
convention," picking up '^ everjMnfidel fanaticism 
afloat," and joining with "no-marriage perfection- 
ists, transcendentalists, Cape Cod [come- outers f?)] " 
in an attack on the Bible and the ministry. These 
letters came to Garrison's hands, and he commented 
on them with a burst of wrath which closed as 
follows : * ' My friends in Eugland may rest as- 
sured that this pretended zeal of Nathaniel Colver 
for the institutions of religion, and this slanderous 
assault upon my religious views, proceed from 



206 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

personal animosity toward myself ; nor would they 
be led astray by any false statements he might be 
disposed to make, if they knew him as well as he is 
known at home by those who are able to discrimi- 
nate between the form of holiness and the power 
ofit."i 

Once more Garrison was gleefully afforded by 
his enemies an opportunity to place himself in such 
a position that he would make no converts, but 
merely alienate some hesitating souls, already be- 
ginning to doubt him as a safe guide. There is no 
reason to suppose that Garrison was in any way 
deluded by what was going on. If he remained of 
brave heart at this time, writing more sonnets and 
keeping up the old editorial vigor, it was largely 
because he had not yet seen any new light to per- 
suade him to alter his course, dark as it may have 
been. The Liberty i^arty's small showing at the 
national election was to have been foreseen, and its 
efforts brought no conviction to his mind that he 
ought to involve himself in the movement and in 
the necessary limitations and obligations entailed 
on any party allegiance. But as the filial biogra- 
phers have wisely admitted, the rise of this little 
party ^' marks the end of the expansion of the 
purely moral organization of the anti-slavery senti- 
ment of the country.'' ^ 

From this point on we shall have to consider 
Garrisonianism in relation to the other advancing 
efforts to oppose not only slavery itself, but the 

' Liberator, Vol. XI. p. 19 (Jan. 29, 1841). , 
» Life, Vol. II, p. 434. 



A HOU8E I>lVlDIIsG AGAINST ITSELF 207 

manifestation of the slave power. This power was 
contending in a great game in which the states and 
territories were the squares and statesmen and 
their parties were the figures to be played. Its 
opponents were not, so it was believed, a handful 
of men and women in Boston chapels disintegrating 
what union they had among themselves by futile 
Sabbatarian, i)6J^^^<^tionist, non-resistant and other 
mad doctrines. Eather was the rest of the country 
now beginning to feel dimly than to think clearly that 
the union of states must be saved by removing from 
democratic government a powerful and irreconcil- 
able element, an imperium in repuhlica^ to be elimi- 
nated^only by slow constitutional and political proc- 
esses or else by the swifter methods of force. Any 
increasing solidarity of action by this democratic 
body was cause for anxiety on the part of the slave 
power, well equipped with resourceful and com- 
petent intellects. The movement rising in central 
New York, impotent as it proved to be in its first 
electorial try-out, was of more concern to the tide- 
waiters of politics than was any ''moral organiza- 
tion, '^ all the paths of which were peace. The 
foolishness of preaching once more seemed doomed 
to meet its usual fate fi'om a froward generation. 



CHAPTEE IX 

THE INFIDEL GAKKISON 

It is fitting at this point to fall back a little and 
retrace somewhat carefully the steps bj^ which Gar- 
rison had arrived at so great an alienation from be- 
liefs once formally cherished by him. The mere 
annals of biography do not altogether sujjply the 
enlightenment necessary to avoid a misjudgment 
of his career at this crisis. 

Up to 1835 he had arraigned the churches for be- 
ing false to their mission, but felt and uttered no 
disturbing unorthodox sentiments. Between that 
year and 1840 he followed a path of rapid departure 
from the accepted religious ideas of his day, until 
he had reached a position far from any kind of or- 
thodoxy, however vaguely defined. Xaturally, he 
ceased in time to have any connection with organ- 
ized religious activity, except that he attended the 
aiinual meeting of the creedless body of '' Progress- 
ive Friends." Devout by nature, he came to live 
his religious life so entirely with the spirit that he 
found every incarnation of the faith which was a 
force within him inadequate to express his passion 
for righteousness. According to Cardinal Newman, 
heresiarchs, among whom Garrison must surely be 
reckoned, are commonly men of singular purity of 
character, who, seizing upon some neglected article 
of faith or morals, make it the dominant element of 



THE INFIDEL GARRISON 209 

life, instead of one among many parts in the mani- 
fold unity of perfection. To the orthodox, that is 
to say, to those who accept a traditional faith and 
an established ideal of conduct, such men are of 
course abominable. To proclaim a standard of con- ' 
duct severer than the one commonly accepted is in 
itself wounding to the sensibilities of all those who 
do not adopt the new doctrines. It strikes at the » 
very heart of the professional teaching of morals. 

By those who hold to traditional beliefs, the vi- - 
sions of new or neglected truth, the heresies of too 
ardent a desire for perfect holiness, are looked upon 
as constituting a more i^ernicious infidelity than the 
deadness of mere uufaith. They are pregnant with 
obscure and dangerous implications. They gener- 
ally express an independent way of viewing life, 
which, not clearly perceived by the leaders who put 
them forward, is later brought distinctly into con- 
sciousness, and proves destructive to ancient forms 
of faith. So it had been with Ganisoii. At first 
embracing an evangelical Christianity, but with a 
living belief, not with the half- belief of the average 
conformist, whose compromise with the world is in- 
fused through his whole moral being, he had 
banned church and clergy for cowardice and moral 
blindness in failing to do their duty when judged 
by the standards of their own professed doctrines. 
Later, he found the orthodox formulas themselves 
inadequate, and brought on himself the charge of 
infidelity. With the passage of years, he put for- 
ward his beliefs more connectedly and prominently, 
and accordingly provoked to increased energy the 



210 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKEISON 

iudignatiou due to the severity of bis rebukes aud to 
his heresies. Gradually, too, he brought all parts of 
his moral and intellectual activity into close co- 
herence. 

One feature of Garrison's nature was an extreme 
simplicity of constitution, which caused his acts to 
be the immediate symbols of his thought and faith. 
Faiths were to him not mere intellectual convic- 
tions, but controlling powers in his life. He had 
no conception of a belief accepted and not acted upon. 
He had not in the slightest degree a ''problematic na- 
ture" ; there were no complicating obstructions be- 
tween his mind and his life. He could never have 
understood the saying: "The thing that I would 
not, that I do." There is no greater source of cour- 
age, power, and joy than a nature like Garrison's. 
He was confident in defeat, serene in the midst of 
annoyances ; happy without indifference, even when 
the vision of human injustice was before his eyes ; 
and authoritative as a messenger from God, no mat- 
ter how men might assail and events might seem to 
discredit his teachings. He took to himself with 
implicit confidence the belief that Jesus is the 
model and inspirer of life, and put his faith into 
practice by laboring for the slave. Surely, it 
seemed to him, He whose special mission on earth 
was to the humble and the despised, who offended 
the social prejudices of His age by eating with pub- 
licans and sinners, would not have left the slave 
outside the sphere of His sympathies. He who 
came to give light to the world would not have en- 
dured the walling off of millions of men from the 



THE INFIDEL GAEEISON 211 

light shining for others. He whose function was 
to elevate manhood and to inculcate the dignity of 
the individual soul would not have been satisfied to 
leave the souls of millions in bondage. Garrison, 
in his bitter condemnation of slaveholders and his 
savage rebukes of the clergy who condoned slave- 
holding, felt himself but the follower of Him who 
taught a noble wrath by His denunciation of the 
scribes and Pharisees, the clerical respectability of 
His age, and who drove out the money-changers 
from the fore- court of the temple, where they had 
a prescriptive right to be. Likewise he thought 
himself the follower of Him who came to bring not 
peace but a sword, in promulgating the one gospel 
of the day which had the power to set clearly oppo- 
site to each other the forces of light and darkness in 
American life. 

The Church, in glory and agony, is perpetually 
bringing forth children whom she must perpetu- 
ally disown. She teaches an uncompromising 
personal holiness ; the germs at least of an ascetic, 
communistic, even anarchistic ideal are to be traced 
in her Founder's life and teachings. Ardent and 
logical souls in every generation are thus provoked 
to revolt or to separate from the accepted order. Yet 
the Church, being planned for permanence, is inevi- 
tably conservative. As it essays to stimulate and 
guide sentiment and emotion, it must be supported 
by sentiments and emotions already formed and 
fixed. It cannot shock its members by teaching a 
new or a forgotten truth for which they are not pre- 
pared. In the nature of things the cloth opposed 



212 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEKISOK 

Garrisou, while at the same time the source of his 
abolitionism was Christian faith, his arguments 
were at bottom theological, and his strongest sup- 
porters were either in the ministry or had prepared 
for it. 

To Garrisou, the lack of moral initiative in the 
Church and the ministry seemed like recreancy and 
practical apostasy. It was, indeed, in his mind the 
Uni^ardonable Sin, blasphemy against the Holy 
Spirit, vulgar anathematization of the inspiration 
of God as revealed in the only overpoweringly im- 
l^ortaut message of the time to the American peo- 
ple. To those ministers who, by failing to con- 
demn slavery, were in his mind not delivering the 
essential truth for their time, he applied Isaiah's 
name for the prophets who did not fulfil their mis- 
sion — "Dumb Dogs." Looking upon the Church 
as a reality only so far as it was the depositary of 
truth, the incarnation of a faith, he proclaimed that 
any church which admitted the slaveholder to its 
communion had ipso facto cut itself off from com- 
munion with the spirit of Jesus, and that all true 
Christians must have no fellowship with it. 

The condemnation of the actual Church and the 
reprobation of the actual ministry, however irritat- 
ing to Garrison's opponents, did not imply depart- 
ure from established doctrinal standards. In point 
of fact, Garrison abandoned them only one at a 
time. The attitude of the clei'gy upon slaveiy 
forced upon him the question of the authority of the 
clergy, and the official action of various denomina- 
tions obliged him to consider the relation of the be- 



THE IKFIDEL GAEEISON 213 

liever to the depositary of faith wheu that was it- 
self recreant to the truth. 

Garrison repelled with energy the charge that he 
was an infidel, proclaiming in effect that his theol- 
ogy was that of the Friends, and declaring his rev- 
erence for the ''true authority" of the Scriptures ; 
— ^'they are my text-book, and worth all the other 
books in the universe.'' 

The immediate object of Colver's attack on him 
after the Chardon Street Convention of November, 
1840, was to discredit him in the minds of his Eng- 
lish supporters. As a purely moral agitation, the 
cause of anti-slavery had claimed and received the 
aid in money and activity of the friends of man 
throughout the world, and especially in England. 
The attack met with instantaneous success. Col- 
lins wrote home to Garrison, '' Woman's rights and 
non-governmentism are quite respectable when com- 
pared to your views.'' Garrison was there regarded 
as a follower of Owen, as a socialist and a free-lover ; 
and the o^Dposition to him grew so strong that his 
adherents on the London Committee were held by 
their opponents as personally unfriendly and as un- 
faithful to the cause. 

Torrey and Phelps, both ministers of the Gospel, 
supported Colver's cliarges, and combining all the 
obnoxious ideas of the day, no- government, woman's 
rights, no-marriage, non-resistance, — into one amal- 
gam of horrid beliefs, strove to fasten the corrosive 
mass upon Garrison. It is no wonder that it adhered. 
The public never makes fine distinctions. And in 
a generation when decorating a church with flow- 



214 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

ers was widely deuouuced as desecration, it would 
have been too much to expect Garrison's radical 
views of religion not to be regarded as tantamount 
to infidelity. 

Garrison, in the meantime, moved by his simple 
and undisturbed faith in the jjower of truth and the 
Tightness of the world, did not hesitate to realize 
the needs of his soul by pursuing the path upon 
which he had begun to walk. Though he had 
nothing to do with calling the first Chardon Street 
meeting, he moved the convening of a second in 
March, 1841, to discuss the origin and authority of 
the ministry. He did not address this convention, 
but exerted a potent iufiuence in guiding its activi- 
ties, and later expressed the most anti-ecclesiastical 
views on the subject. 

At a third and the last convention, held October 
26-28, 1841, the Church was discussed, and Garri- 
son's mystic idealism and individualistic spirit are 
expressed in the resolutions introduced by him. 
They contain affirmations, ' ' that the true Church is 
independent of all human organizations, creeds, or 
compacts . . . that it is not in the province of 
any man, or any body of men, to admit or to ex- 
clude from that Church any one who is created in 
the divine image ; . . . that it is nowhere en- 
joined, by Christ or His apostles, upon any man 
that he should connect himself with any associa- 
tion, by whatever name called ; but all are left to 
act singly, or in conjunction with others, according 
to their own free choice.'* ' 

» Life, Vol. Ill, pp. 7-8. 



THE INFIDEL GAERISON 216 

The distinct heresies of Garrison u^Don the stand- 
ards and the constitution of the Church were much 
less fundamental and provoked less opposition than 
two other articles of his creed, — "perfectionism" 
and " non-resistance, '^ already referred to, but of 
which somewhat fuller mention must now be made. 
While the logical basis and relationships of these 
doctrines are simple and easily explained, their 
actual genesis in American life, the way in which 
they were viewed in the time of Garrison, and their 
relation to the many diverse tendencies of that 
divided age are extremely complicated. Their 
ultimate source is the French rationalism of tlie 
eighteenth century. But as hitherto stated, the 
spread in America of the conception of perfec- 
tionism was due mainly to the preaching of John 
H. Noyes, a mau whose influence on Garrison 
is clearly traceable, and who is best known as the 
founder of the Oneida Community. The doctrine 
of the obligation of moral perfection is suscept- 
ible of many interpretations. It may mean that 
as he who is regenerate is capable of fulfilling 
the whole law ; any who fail at any point are not 
truly regenerate,— in other words, that the grace 
of the regenerate is indefeasible and perfect. Such 
a doctrine may easily result in spiritual pride and 
a harsh and gloomy contempt for mankind. On 
the other hand, the same doctrine is consistent with 
the teaching that perfection is a matter of the 
heart, and that the conduct of the regenerate man, 
no matter what it is, cannot be wrong. Such a 
doctrine easily leads into a practical antinomianism 



216 AYILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

of the wildest sort. Xoyes had seemed to be tend- 
ing iu the hitter direction. In liarticular he had 
been led by the many obvious miseries of the 
ordinary conjugal relation, and the inconsistency 
of ordinary sexual morality, to propound a new 
system for regulating the relations of the sexes. 
The adversaries of Garrison naturally took advan- 
tage of the opportunity offered them by his accept- 
ing some of Noyes's tenets to represent him as ac- 
cepting all, and to make him out an enemy of the 
very foundations of society. Garrison, with proper 
resentment, denied this charge and expressed his 
belief in the institution of marriage, which Noyes, 
ranking a wife as a species of property, rejected as 
he did all kinds of private ownership. At the same 
time. Garrison, with worldly imprudence and im- 
personal generosity, refused to join the chorus of 
condemnation chanted in mauy keys against the 
doctrine of ^'holiness," that is, the possibility and 
duty of '' entire sauctification in this present life.'' 
The language of his justification shows how close 
was the association in his mind between the rights 
of the negro, as he regarded them, and the obliga- 
tion to perfect holiness : 

'^Holiness is incompatible with jobbery, oppres- 
sion, love of dominion, murder, pride, vaingloiy, 
worldly pomp, selfishness, and sinful lusts. But 
these ecclesiastical bodies are determined to make 
a Christian life compatible with a militaiy pro- 
fession, with killing enemies, with enslaviiig a 
portion of mankind, with the robbing of th(^ poor, 
with worldliness and ambition, with a participation 



THE INFIDEL GAKKlSOK 217 

in all poijular iniquities. Hence, when abolition- 
ism declares that no man can love God who en- 
slaves another, they deny it, and declare that man- 
stealiug and Christianity may co-exist in the same 
character. When it is asserted that the forgiveness 
instead of the slaughter of enemies is necessary to 
constitute one a Christian, they affirm that to haug, 
stab, or shoot enemies, under certain circumstances, 
is perfectly consonant with the spirit of Christ. 
Thus they make no distinction between the precious 
and the vile, sanctify what is evil, perpetuate 
crime, and honor what is devilish. They are cages 
of unclean birds, Augean stables of pollution, which 
need thorough purification. . . . 

' ' As men who are conscious of guilt should not 
attempt to excuse themselves, so should they not 
countenance sin in others. . . . Instead, there- 
fore, of assailing the doctrine, '■ Be ye perfect, even 
as your Father in Heaven is perfect,' let us all aim 
to establish it, not merely as theoretically right, but 
as practically attainable ; and if we are conscious 
that we are not j^et wholly clean, not yet entirely 
reconciled to God, not yet filled with perfect love, 
let us ... be willing to be delivered from the 
power of darkness, and translated into the kingdom 
of God's dear Son." ^ 

Garrison's standard of outward conduct, it may 
well be said, was one with that set by the more 
severe evangelical sects. Though he disapproved 
Sabbatarian restrictions imposed by law, he ob- 
served Sunday in his household as a day of grave 
1 Life, Vol. Ill, pp. 14, 15. 



218 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON 

though not gloomy rest. As for theatres, the fol- 
lowing dismal paragraph appeared in the Liberator 
of March 13, 1840, the same year in which the 
holding of the Sabbath convention caused him to be 
so bitterly denounced. '^ No truly good man can 
regard the present condition of the theatres of 
Boston but with intense delight. These deep and 
powerful sources of evil, which have for many years 
sown and nourislied corruption in its most dreadful 
form, among all classes of the community, seem 
destined speedily to become extinct. This is an 
omen of good to which no boundaries can be affixed, 
and which the enlarged and constantly increasing 
attendance at the meetings of our institutions, moral 
and religious, furnishes almost incontestable evi- 
dence that we may soon realize.'^ 

The doctrine of non-resistance, taught alike by 
Garrison and by Noyes, was still more fundamental 
in Garrison's creed than that of holiness. Like the 
rest of his doctrines it was lumped for condemnation 
with all kinds of infidelity. For instance, the Eev. 
Edward Beecher, president of Jacksonville College, 
Illinois, is said ^ to have '' prognosticated the speedy 
end of the world by ' the general wickedness which 
prevailed, the doctrines of the perfectionists, non- 
resistants, deists, atheists, and pantheists, which are 
all those of false Christs.' " The non-resistant, ac- 
cepting literally the words, and obeying literally 
the conduct of Jesus, with perfect confidence in 
their practicability and reasonableness, taught, 
first of all, the duty of abstaining from violence as 
1 Life, Vol. Ill, p. 14. 



THE INFIDEL GARRISON 219 

a private obligatiou between mau aiid mau. Hence 
all attempts to punish or take vengeance on a 
wrong-doer by physical compulsion or restraint 
were sinful. As between nations, likewise, war was 
forbidden ; a soldier was a murderer. The doctrine 
was obviously incompatible with capital punish- 
ment. Slavery, resting necessarily on compulsion, 
was peculiarly hateful, the sum of all abominations, 
to the non-resistant. It was nothing but perpetual 
private war. The logic of non-resistance, however, 
fairly considered, goes much further still. The 
existence of all governments depends ultimately 
upon their power to exert force. Not only cai^ital 
punishment, but all the penalties of law are con- 
straints put upon men by external force. The 
equality of the law consists simply in the fact that 
the organized force of society is exerted against the 
disobedient. Hence non-resistance was regarded as 
a no-government idea, — as a j)hilosophical anarch- 
ism. The non-resistant may suffer the force of 
government ; he will never employ it. He cannot 
plead in a court to recover his debts, or fill any 
public office, or perform the commonest duties of 
citizenship. 

When the destructive nature of these ideas was 
insisted uj)on, Garrison answered by saying, in 
effect, that government is an inevitable consequence 
of the sins and faithlessness of mankind. As things 
are, he admitted, a society without a government 
would be self-destructive, and must, to protect it- 
self, reestablish the rule of ordered force. Yet 
the fault, he contended, lies not in the ideas of 



220 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

non-resistauce, but in the siufiiluess and faithless- 
ness of maukiud. The confused logic of this argu- 
ment is characteristic of Garrison's treatment of 
other fundamental questions. The doctrines of 
non-resistance will not bear thus to be reduced to 
truisms. Assuredly if no man did wrong, there 
would be no need of punitive law ; but the ques- 
tion is, if men do wrong, what must be done ? If 
it is wicked to exert violence upon them, every 
officer of the law is a sinner, and only the wicked 
can be called upon to govern. The non-resistant's 
view of life implies that a man has a right to seek 
for the good of his own soul without regard to what 
he can do for the welfare of mankind, that he has 
a right to a beatitude bought by the withdrawal 
from life. Such views might justly seem dangerous 
to all who believed in maintaining society in which 
the violently wicked must be controlled, and who 
looked with dread on the possibility of weakening 
the fouudations of social morality. 

The elements of Garrison's creed have been pre- 
sented separately. They had their principle of 
unity in a belief in the all-imj)ortance of the indi- 
vidual. Garrison's function was not even primarilj^ 
the emancipation of the slave — that was but an 
incident in a larger work ; namely, his contribution 
to the emancipation of the individual soul in 
America. "The years between 1820 and 1830," 
says Mr. John Jay Chapman in his essay on Em- 
erson, "were the most pitiable through which 
this country has ever passed. The conscience of 
the Korth was pledged to the Missouri Compro- 



THE INFIDEL GAERISON 221 

mise, and that Compromise neither shimbered nor 
slept. In New England, where the old theocratical 
oligarchy of the colonies had survived the Eev- 
olution and kept under its own water-locks the 
new flood of trade, the conservatism of i)olitics 
reinforced the conservatism of religion ; and as if 
these two iDquisitions were not enough to stifle 
the soul of man, the conservatism of business self- 
interest was superimposed. The history of the con- 
flicts which followed has been written by the rad- 
icals, who negligently charged up to self-interest 
all the resistance which establishments offer to 
change. But it was not solely self-interest, it was 
conscience that backed the Missouri Comx^ro- 
mise, nowhere else so strongly as in New England. 
. . . It was the spiritual power of a committed 
conscience which met the new forces as they arose, 
and it deserves a better name than these new 
forces afterward gave it. In 1830 the social fruits 
of these heavy conditions could be seen in the life 
of the people. Free speech was lost. ... So 
long as there is any subject which men may not freely 
discuss, they are timid upon all subjects. They 
wear an iron crown and talk in whispers. Such 
social conditions crush and maim the individual, 
and throughout New England, as throughout the 
whole North, the individual was crushed and 
maimed." ^ 

It was Garrison's work to help in breaking this 
oppression, ''heavy as frost, and deep almost as 
life." When he had spoken out, tlie whole air 
^ Emerson and Other Essays, pp. 6, 7, 9. 



222 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

was freer and the heavens were lighter above the 
heads of men. The adjustment of the freedom of 
the individual and the control of society is one 
of those fascinatingly infinite problems forever ap- 
proximated and never accomplished. Order will 
be preserved because it must be ; but freedom in 
each generation must be fought for. With the 
advance of civilization, the increasing complexity 
of the social order allows a greater scope of free- 
dom, and is at the same time fertile in new forces 
of oppression, more remote and delicate but no 
less real than those of past ages. In each gener- 
ation men must be raised up to struggle lest the 
past should saddle and weight the future ; and to 
Garrison was allotted the glory of being a voice, 
and a mighty voice, of freedom for his age. Such 
men as he make it possible for others to deal with 
life frankly at first hand, and their service to hu- 
manity is not to be estimated by considering the 
logical soundness of their views. 

The dogma of non-resistance, with all its corol- 
laries, is but one expression of the individualistic 
creed. Obviously, the dignity of the individual 
requires freedom from external compulsion. The 
law must be obeyed, but must be accepted first 
from within. As individuals, women have, on 
principle, the same rights as men ; and therefore 
the Woman^s Rights movement is but one phase 
of an individualistic view of society. The social 
order may not demand from the individual his 
sovereignty over his own moral nature ; and hence 
resulted Garrison's no-government ideas. Espe- 



THE INFIDEL GAKRISON 223 

cially in the most intimate realm of tbe inner life, 
in the religious life, the soul must come freely face 
to face with its Maker, it must weave its own gar- 
ment, must be incarnate in its own body of forms, 
taking to itself that which is natural to it. From 
these conceptions follow the mystic idea of the 
Church, the lightness with which ties of denomi- 
national association bound Garrison, his disregard 
of form, his insistence on spiritual realities as the 
only religious facts of consequence. The moral 
life was lived by him from within outward. Garri- 
son was, moreover, a man of action. Ideas inter- 
ested him only as principles by which men were 
moved to deeds. So he judged institutions by 
their fruits in the conduct of their individual mem- 
bers. The Church and the state were worthy of 
reverence only so far as they contributed to justice 
and right in the life of the believer and the citizen. 
Those who felt that truth to their own natures 
required them to separate from corporate activities, 
whether o^Church or state, were called by a special 
name, — ''Come- Outers'^ — as having followed the 
apostolic i)recex)t : ''Be not unequally yoked with 
unbelievers. . . . Come ye out from among 
them, and be ye separate." ^ Unable to conquer 
the evil of a corrupt world, they at least did 
not share in its corruption. Xo matter whose 
hands were soiled, theirs were clean. Such was 
Garrison's separation from his country. As a 
protest, this, like a hunger-strike or hara-kiri, was 
doubtless impressive, even valuable in its influence ; 

12 Cor. 6:14. 



224 WILLIAM LLOYD GAJIKLSON 

as a philosophj^ of life, it is folly. For if we cou- 
seut to exist at all, we must at least accept the past j 
aud how can we withdraw from sharing iu the 
common life except by withdrawing from life alto- 
gether ? 

There was one manifestation of the individualistic 
spirit with which Garrison felt no sympathy, — 
" Xo-orgauization." Some of the tender con- 
sciences of the time found themselves unable to 
subscribe to the conditions of any cooperation at all. 
They could not endure the tyranny of committees, 
presiding ofticers, and parliamentary procedure. 
One may at least congratulate them if he cannot 
a|)prove them. Dr. Johnson somewhere reckons 
up a formidable and impressive list of the things 
like sickness and sleep and petty business, which 
shorten life by wasting time and impairing strength. 
He did not know committee meetings. At the 
Chardon Street Convention, some, like Bronson Al- 
cott, desired the meetings to be conducted without 
formal organization of any kind, and Emerson 
records as one of the advantages derived from the 
convention, ''the attitude taken by individuals of 
their number of resistance to the insane routine of 
parliamentary usage." ^ This spirit now threatened 
the organized abolition movement. Some of the 
most devoted Abolitionists, among them Garrison's 
attached friend, N. P. Rogers, held that it was 
obligatory on them to reject all propaganda except 
moral and spiritual forces, and that they must not 
be bound by any systematic organization whatever. 
^Emerson, Works, Centenary edition, Vol. X, p. 376. 



THE INFIDEL GAERISON 225 

Alarmed by this tendency, Garrison in April, 1841, 
framed resolutions passed by the Middlesex Anti- 
Slavery Society, to the effect that "if 'new organ- 
ization' be in direct opposition to the genius of the 
anti-slavery enterprise, 7io-organization (as now 
advocated in certain quarters) would be still more 
unphilosophical and pernicious in its tendencies." 

Still others among the reforming spirits of that 
age were striving to creatti a new economic rank. 
To this end some strove to combine freedom ^\\\h 
cooperation by establishing communities. Brook 
Farm was set in action by George Eipley in 1840- 
1841. A few months later followed the community 
at Hopedale, under the moral inspiration of the 
Eev. Adin Ballon. In 1842, the community at 
Northampton, Mass., came into existence. It 
had no denominational connections. This North- 
ampton '^ Association of Education and Industry'' 
was of special interest to Garrison, for it was 
organized by men whom he iDronounced to be 
*' among the freest and best spirits of the age." 
One of them was his brother-in-law, George W. 
Benson. Still, kindly as he regarded this, as other 
movements for the amelioration of the lot of man- 
kind, he was not sanguine, speaking of the organi- 
zation of communities in a slightly satiric tone as a 
''new species of colonization." 

In truth, Garrison never exhibited the least 
sympathy with efforts to reform the relations of 
employer and employed under the regime of un- 
restricted competition. He was indeed solicitous 
lest such movements should weaken the attack 



226 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

upon slavery. Thus, when in England, he com- 
bated the idea that a single workman there, how- 
ever oppressed, was a slave. He was cold to the 
communities. He took no interest in the land laws 
which, as Professor Commons has made clear, were 
primarily intended to relieve the labor market of 
the East, and which by creating the free-soil popu- 
lation, in time upset the old balance of the sections 
aiid destroyed slavery. And even after the final 
victory of his cause, he scorned the labor move- 
ments, and declared that if working men would 
throw off the worst tyranny under which they 
suffered, the slavery of their own appetites, they 
need not fear subjection to the yoke of an em- 
ployer. 

After the secession of 1839, the state of the 
American Anti-Slavery Society was such that its 
funds would not support lecturers while yet to 
maintain it the most active agitation was necessary. 
The offense taken at Garrison's many heresies and 
the charges actively disseminated against him made 
him the more responsible for the support of the 
society, and he therefore became very active in the 
lecture field. From among the irreconcilables, a 
small band of devoted supporters came to his assist- 
ance. 

The conditions of the time made it natural for 
the fulminations against the Church and clergy to 
be especially severe. During the year 1841-1842 
the record of tlie national denominations was, from 
an abolitionist point of view, particularly black, 
and abolitionist resolutions and speeches were of ex- 



THE IKFIDEL GAEEISON 227 

cessive violence. Garrison's denunciations, though 
harsh, were not in bad taste. He declared, for ex- 
ample, in the ^ew England Anti-Slavery Conven- 
tion of May, 1841, that ''in regard to the existence 
of slavery, . . . the clergy stand wickedly 
preeminent, and ought to be unsparingly exposed 
and reproved before the people" ; but others 
wished to assert by resolution, " That the Church 
and clergy of the United States, as a whole, con- 
stitute a great Brotherhood of Thieves, inas- 
much as they countenance the highest kind of theft, 
L e., man-stealing." Among those i^rominent in 
the debate on these resolutions were naturally 
Garrison's associates on the platform. The stand 
they took on this occasion was characteristic of all 
their utterances. Only one, C. C. Burleigh, was in 
favor of the more restrained form proposed by 
Garrison. Parker Pillsbury, N. P. Eogers, and 
Stephen S. Foster urged the convention to accept 
the more violent words of the second resolution, 
which had been offered by H. C. Wright. Abby 
Kelley, who was another active lecturer at this 
time, presented to the tenth anniversary meeting 
of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society resolu- 
tions, "That the sectarian organizations called 
cliurches are combinations of thieves, robbers, 
adulterers, pirates, and murderers, and as such 
form the bulwark of American slavery." 

Pillsbury, Foster, Miss Kelley, and Burleigh 
constituted with Garrison the coloi'-guard of the 
anti -slavery lecturers of this year. They were all 
persons of marked and picturesque character. 



228 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

Parker Pillsbury was the ninth of thirteen children 
in the family of a poor New Hampshire farmer. 
By sacrificial eftbrt he succeeded in obtaining a 
theological education, and was in attendance at the 
Andover Seminary when he took up the aboli- 
tionist cause. Being warned by the faculty that if 
he persisted in addressing abolitionist meetings he 
need not expect to be recommended to a parish, he 
unhesitatiugly threw in his lot with the reformers, 
and sacrificed his worldly future. ' He was a man of 
direct and vigorous speech, and his portrait repre- 
sents him as intent and earnest, but in no wise hard 
or obstinate. In all the gallery of the anti-slavery 
apostles, there is no more manly or attractive 
countenance than his. 

Stephen S. Foster,^ like Pillsbury, had made his 
way up from humble circumstances. Though born 
in 1809, he did not graduate from college until 
1838, wheu he received his degree from Dartmouth. 
He then went to the Union Theological Seminary, 
but abandoned his prei)aration for the ministry to 
take up the lot of the reformer in 1840. Not more 
resolute than Pillsburj^, he was much more sen- 
sational and irritating to his adversaries. He 
made a practice of interrupting religious meetings 
to give his testimony for freedom, and being a 
steadfast non-resistant, bore with irritating meek- 
ness the assaults from minister, elder, or deacon to 
which he was in consequence subjected. He was 

1 Life, Vol. Ill, p. 181 n. ; Pillsbuiy, Acta of the Anti-Slaveiy 
Apostles, p. 85. 

^ Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles, pp. 123-147, 186. 



THE INFIDEL GAERISON 229 

several times in jail, and had more power than any 
other anti-slavery lecturer to briug on a shower of 
rotten eggs and brickbats. His method of stirring 
up his audience is made very clear by his favorite 
assertion, that the Methodist Church was worse 
than any brothel in New York. A scraggy beard 
grew about his eager, intellectual face, and gave 
it a look of wilduess. His wide, thin lips were 
compressed and shut together in a straight line. 
Across his chin there was a wrinkle, as if he held 
his face habitually in a scornful and truculent 
expression, and he looked as if he were always 
ready to jump at an enemy. Yet withal his was a 
fine and truthful soul. 

Miss Abby Kelley, who afterward married Foster, 
followed the same plan of causing "the truth to 
make a sensation by making it sensational," — to use 
Gail Hamilton's phrase. Her face, with its beauti- 
ful wide brow and sensitive lips, had much intellec- 
tual dignity and nobility, and no little sweetness, 
but her eyes shone with the undue brightness, and 
her face was worn with the undue intensity, which 
bore witness to the sacrifice of poise and self-control 
in most of this interesting company. In the later 
and increasingly bitter years of Abolitionism a 
spirit of acerbity grew upon her. 

Both Pillsbury and Foster were bearded, in oppo- 
sition to the fashion of the day, but their hair and 
beards, though not conventionally elegant, were as 
nothing compared with the flowing, sandy beard and 
untrimraed chevelure of C. C. Burleigh. His nose, 
slightly curved downward at the end, and his long, 



230 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

curling hair aud beard gave him a Jewish look. 
As his expressiou was siugularly raild, the jibe of 
the Ryuders mob, ''Shave that tall Christ, and 
make a wig Tor Garrison," had its small share of 
vulgar wit. Burleigh was unquestionably the 
ablest debater among the Abolitionists, being fluent, 
intense, logical, and clear ; but he was not their 
most impressive orator, because he lacked conden- 
sation and the massive weight of Garrison, as well 
as the imagination and other gifts of Phillips. 

Burleigh had long been active in the anti-slavery 
cause. The other three had more lately joined the 
ranks. In his ''Letter from Boston" about the 
Anti- Slavery Fair in 1846, Lowell describes them in 
witty and telling verse, which in spite of its length, 
is here, as by the Garrisons, given without apology, 
to revive a vivid epitome of men and days fast pass- 
ing from the American memory.^ The letter is ad- 
dressed to James Miller McKim, the editor of the 
Pennsylvania Freeman : 

"Beyond, a crater in each eye, 
Sways brown, broad-shouldered Pillsbury, 
Who tears up words like trees by the roots, 
A Theseus in stout cowhide boots, 
The wager of eternal war 
Against that loathsome Minotaur 
To whom we sacrifice each year 
The best blood of our Athens here, 
(Dear M., pray brush up your Lempriere.) 
A terrible denouncer he, 

'The text, however, follows Lowell's revision in the 1891 
edition of his poems. 



THE INFIDEL GARRISON 231 

Old Sinai burns un(j[uenchably 

Upon his lips ; he might well be a 

Hot-blazing soul from fierce Jndea, 

Habakkuk, Ezra, or Hosea. 

His words are red hot iron searers, 

And nightmare-like he mounts his hearers, 

Spurring them like avenging Fate, or 

As Waterton ^ his alligator. 

'* Hard by, as calm as summer even, 
Smiles the reviled and pelted Stephen, 
The unappeasable Boanerges 
To all the Churches and the Clergies, 
The grim savant who, to complete 
His own peculiar cabinet, 
Contrived to label 'mong his kicks 
One from the followers of Hicks ; ^ 
Who studied mineralogy 
Not with soft book upon the knee. 
But learned the properties of stones 
By contact sharp of flesh and bones. 
And made the experimentum crucis 
With his own body's vital juices; 
A man with caoutchouc endurance, 
A perfect gem for life insurance, 
A kind of maddened John the Baptist, 
To whom the harshest word comes aptest. 
Who, struck by stone or brick ill-starred. 
Hurls back an epithet as hard, 
Which, deadlier than stone or brick, 
Has a propensity to stick. 
His oratory is like the scream 
Of the iron horse's frenzied steam 

^ Charles Waterton, the naturalist, who tells of bestriding a 
gavial when he and his men captured it, 

"The Hicksite Quakers, usually strong Abolitionists, and 
Non-Resistants ; even from them Foster collected rebufiEs. 



232 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

Which warns the world to leave wide space 
For the black engine's swerveless race. 
Ye men with neckcloths white, I warn you — 
Hahet a whole haymow in coi-nu. 

"A Judith, there, turned Quakeress, 
Sits Abby in her modest dress, 
Serving a table ({uietly, 
As if that mild and downcast eye 
Flashed never, with its scorn intense, 
More than Medea's eloquence. 
So the same force which shakes its dread 
Far-blazing locks o'er ^Etna's head, 
Along the wires in silence fares 
And messages of commerce bears. 
No nobler gift of heart and brain. 
No life more white from spot or stain, 
"Was e'er on Freedom's altar laid 
Than hers, the simple Quaker maid. 

"These last three (leaving in the lurch 
Some other themes) assault the Church, 
Who therefore writes them in her lists 
As Satan's limbs and atheists ; 
For each sect has one argument 
Whereby the rest to hell are sent. 

* ^f * * * -K- 

If the poor Church, bj" power enticed, 
Finds none so infidel as Christ, 

* -x- * * * * 

What wonder World and Church should call 
The true faith atheistical? " 

But the most remarkable incident of Garrison's 
tours during the year 1841 was the addition of Fred- 
erick Douglass to the number of abolition lecturers, 
Douglass, a quadroon of ability and force of char- 



l^HE INFIDEL GAERISON 233 

acter, bad made his escape from slavery three years 
before, and was living in New Bedford. Learning 
that Garrison was to speak in Nantucket, he at- 
tended the meeting, and was invited by a gentle- 
man who had heard him address a company of col- 
ored people to support the affirmations of the re- 
formers by his testimony. He describes himself as 
stammering, trembling, and halting in speech, as he 
told the story of his own life and adventures. The 
testimony of others is to the effect that he spoke 
with power and eloquence. The audience, previ- 
ously calm, were thrilled through and through with 
this living proof of the nature of slavery. Garrison 
rose to speak, very quiet, very serene, his whole 
beiug possessed with the transcendent importance 
of his mission. The contrast between the young 
colored man, with his great bush of hair and his 
tawny, leonine beauty, and Garrison, spare of flesh, 
the light shining on the ivory of his now bald head, 
his brown eyes enkindled, and his face expressiog 
at once his calm benevolence and the deep surge of 
feeling stirring him like a quiet but overpowering 
tide, makes this scene di^amatic. When Garrison 
said: "Have we been listening to a man or a 
thing ? " the effect was like that of an electric shock. 
It is not strange that as Garrison, with the full power 
of his voice but without the loss of that dignity al- 
ways attending the fixed poise of his nature, shouted, 
''Shall such a man be sent back to slavery from 
the soil of old Massachusetts ! " '' almost the whole 
assembly," in the words of Parker Pillsbury, an 
eye-witness of the incident, ''sprang with one ac- 



234 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

cord to their feet, and the walls and roof of the 
Athenaeum seemed to shudder with the ^ No, no ! ' 
loud and long- continued in the wild enthusiasm of 
the scene." ^ 

Mr. Garrison's sons tell us that their father did 
not remember his past vividly ; but in the recollec- 
tion of one journey taken late in the summer of 1841 
he found an ever-present source of joy. This was an 
excursion, mainly for jjleasure, into the White 
Mountains, in the company of N. P. Rogers. 
Rogers was a man of lively temperament, widely 
read and pleasantly humorous. Garrison and he 
had been much together in Europe, and had 
come to feel a sincere affection for each other. 
Rogers had been the editor of the Standard^ the 
organ of the national society, and had just been ap- 
pointed to the editorship of the Herald of Free- 
dom^ the organ of the New Hampshire society. 
In August, when relieved of his duties as editor of 
the Standard^ he offered to fulfil a promise made 
while the two were gazing at one of the most 
famous scenes in Scotland : that he would show 
Garrison scenery in New Ham j)shire of a more mass- 
ive and sublime cha^-acter than anything before 
them. The two accordingly went on an excursion 
into the W^hite Mountains. 

A railroad ran from Boston to Nashua, N. H., 
forty miles ; the travolei'S drove the rest of the way. 
'* Blessings on the head that projected, on the 
hands that executed, the railroad mode of convey- 
ance ! " ejaculates Garrison. ''It is superior to 
* Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles^ p. 328. 



THE INFIDEL GARKISON 235 

enlogy. . . . Time and space seem almost an- 
nihiiated." ^ They had traveled these forty miles 
iu two hours ! Their drive took them along the 
whole course of the Merrimac Kiver, near the mouth 
of which, at Newburyport, was the birthplace of Gar- 
rison, and near the head, at Plymouth, N. H., that 
of Rogers. They ascended the Merrimac valley to 
Plymouth, thence crossed to Littleton, climbed 
Mount Washington from the west, and came home 
by way of the Crawford Notch. The j ourney through 
the mountains occupied a week, from August 23d 
to August 30th. Along the way abolition meetings 
were held, in most cases against the opposition of 
the clergy, and sometimes, because of ministerial un- 
friendliness, in the open air. The journey was one 
of innocent hilarity, enlivened by much singing. 
Garrison's ear was true, and he was fond of mel- 
ody ; and one song taught him by Rogers, — '^In 
the days when we went gypsy iug," — became more 
than a favorite with him. Often when Mrs. Gar- 
rison became depressed and anxious about paying 
the monthly bills, her husband used to put his arm 
about her, and walk up and down the room singing 
this song, until the cloud lifted. 

In the lively account of the journey, printed by 
Rogers in the paper that he now went to edit, ap- 
pears the following graceful narrative of an inci- 
dent which presents the abolitionist character with 
quaint vividness, and which may serve to explain, 
if explanation be needed, why the numbers of the 
Abolitionists increased no more rapidly. '* As we 

^ Liberator, Vol. XI, p. 147. 



236 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

rode through the [Frauconia] Notch after friends 
[Thomas Parnell] Beach aud [Ezekiel] Eogers, we 
were alarmed at seeing smoke issue from their 
chaise-top, and cried out to them that their chaise 
was afire ! We were more than suspicions, how- 
ever, that it was something worse than that, and 
that the smoke came out of friend Rogers's mouth. 
And it so turned out. This was before we reached 
the Notch tavern. Alighting there to water our 
beasts, we gave him, all round, a faithful admoni- 
tion. For anti-slavery does not fail to spend its in- 
tervals of public service in mutual and searching 
corrections of the faults of its friends. We gave it 
soundly to friend Rogers — that he, an abolitionist, 
on his way to an anti-slavery convention, should 
desecrate his anti-slavery mouth and that glorious 
Mountain Notch with a stupefying tobacco weed. 
We had halted at the Iron Works tavern to refresh 
our horses, and, while they were eating, walked to 
view the Furnace. As we crossed the little bridge, 
friend Rogers took out another cigar, as if to light 
it when we should reach the fire. ^ Is it any 
malady you have got. Brother Rogers,' said we to 
him, ' that you smoke that thing, or is it habit and 
indulgence merely ? ' ^ It is nothing but habit,' said 
he gravely, 'or, I would say, it icas nothing else,' 
and he significantly cast the little roll OA^er the rail- 
ing into the Ammonoosuck, 'A revolution !' ex- 
claimed Garrison, 'a glorious revolution without 
noise or smoke,^ and he swung his hat cheerily 
about his head." ' 

^ Life, Vol. Ill, p. 22. 



THE INFIDEL GAERISON 237 

When Garrison returned to his desk, he found 
the recurring anxiety as to the finances of the Lib- 
erator waiting for him. The receipts for the year 
were five hundred dollars less than the expenses, 
many subscribers having stopped the paper because 
of Garrison's part in the Sabbath Convention. In 
addition, there came a painful difference with Isaac 
Knapp. A virulent attack was made through him 
upon Garrison. Knapp's unsystematic business 
habits and his dissipation had, it will be remem- 
bered, obliged a separation in 1839 ; and after that 
Knapp, instead of retrieving himself, had gone a 
downward road, spending his time in idleness, 
drink, and gambling. Garrison collected between 
thirty and forty dollars for Knapp from friends at 
a distance who were willing to trust the poor fel- 
low's promises ; but the assistance was thrown 
away. The arrangement made in 1839 was to last 
until January 1, 1842. In the meantime Knapp 
failed in business, and his share in the Liberator^ 
which was part of his assets, had been bought from 
the creditors by E. G. Loring. Late in 1841, Knapp 
endeavored to regain his share in the publication 
of the paper, but was naturallj^ unable to do so. 
On December 6th, he issued a circular giving his 
version of the affair, and declaring that he had been 
deprived by '* treachery and duplicity" of his in- 
terest in the paper. He told how he had been de- 
nied employment on the Liberator when in actual 
want. To prove '^that however many inferior 
causes have been at work, the great and over- 
shadowing reason why there has been so much di- 



238 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

vision and mutual alienation in the anti-slavery 
ranks, has been the selfish and deceptive conduct 
of Mr. Garrison and others at his elbows," Knapp 
designed to start '' the true Liberator ^^"^ to be called 
Knapp' 8 Liberator^ which should be printed as ofleD 
as '' there may be a call for it." 

The associates and supporters of Knapp were 
persons very close to the centre of anti-slavery ag- 
itatioD ; — John Cutts Smith, formerly John Smith 
Cutts, one of the original members of the Massa- 
chusetts Anti-Slavery Societj^, and Hamlett Bates 
and Joel Prentiss Bishop, clerks in the anti-slavery 
society office, the latter of whom, after attacking 
Collins' s of&ce accounts, had associated himself 
with the "New Organization." Bishop is well 
known as the author of several important legal 
treatises, and his seems to have been the ablest 
and the directing mind. The one number of 
Knapp'' s Liberator^ bearing date of January 8, 1842, 
contained Bishop's charges, Knapp\s circular witli 
corroborations, and anonymous attacks on Garrison 
and the board. The document was widely dissem- 
inated in England, and was thought by Garrison to 
be so artfully drawn as to be dangerous. 

The Liberator made no direct reference either to 
the circular or to Knapp- s Liberator^ but the facts of 
the transfer of Knapp' s share in the paper were 
succinctly stated by the financial committee. 



CHAPTER X 

THE ANTI-SLAA^ERY DISUNION SENTIMENT 

When Garrison had just suffered the violence of 
the Boston mob, and when the protection of the 
state had been denied to free speech on the subject 
of slavery, he could still say, "We are not hostile 
to the Constitution of the United States." Six 
years later, in 1841, he denounced the Constitution 
and called on the North to withdraw from the 
Union. He was still not quite ready to offer 
disunion as a program ; yet such a program 
was necessary to meet the Liberty party with its 
definite platform and its distinct war-cry, and in 
February, 1842, he announced it. Toward the end 
of April, he at last declared in the Liberator that 
the time had come to assert "the duty of making 
the Repeal of the Union between the North and 
the South the grand rallying-point until it be 
accomplished, or slavery cease to pollute our soil. 
We are for throwing all the means, energies, 
actions, purposes, and appliances of the genuine 
friends of liberty and republicanism into this one 
channel, and of measuring the humanity, patriot- 
ism, and piety of every man by this one standard.'^ 

The utterance of these views caused the pro- 
Southern papers of New York to threaten and in a 
more or less open manner to incite the mobbing 
of the Anti -Slavery Convention which was to be 



240 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKE180N 

held in that city. Moreover, it brought forth from 
the executive committee of the American Anti- 
Slavery Society a disavowal, in the form of a 
circular to the press of New York, which not only 
declared the dissolution of the Union to be an 
object ''entirely foreign to the purpose for which 
the society was organized," but condemned the 
attempt to bring it about on moral grounds. 
Deeply moved by this opposition from within, 
Garrison replied with the fearful words of Isaiah, 
which he afterward used as a motto in the Liberator. 
Speaking for himself alone, he said : " The message 
of the prophet to the people in Jerusalem [Isaiah 28 : 
14-18] describes the exact character of our ' repub- 
lican ' comjDact. . . . Slavery is a combination 
of Death and Hell, and with it the North have 
made a covenant and are at agreement. As an 
element of the government it is omnipotent, omnis- 
cient, omnipresent. As a component part of the 
Union, it is necessarily a national interest. Di- 
vorced from Norther D protection, it dies ; with that 
protection, it enlarges its boundaries, multiplies its 
victims, and extends its ravages." ^ 

The anniversary meetings of the American Anti- 
Slavery Society were not representative assem- 
blages, but conventions of as many Abolitionists 
from all parts of the country as could and would 

' It seems to have been a treasured belief with Garrison that 
the use of italics and capital letters for emphasis helped to 
kindle a fervor in the reader's mind. This usage has served to 
make the appearance of some of his printed matter unsightly 
to modern eyes^ however effective it may have been with con- 
temporary minds. 



DISUNION SENTIMENT 241 

spare time and money to travel to the appointed 
place. Obviously, there would tend to gather at 
the meetings a large proportion of the most en- 
thusiastic part of the membership, expansive, 
radiant, and eager. The exciting speeches, the 
sense of power and importance due to concentrated 
numbers, accentuated the radical tendencies of the 
members present, and hence the root-and-branch 
policies of Garrison had always a certain advantage 
before this body. Though the formal approval of a 
course of action by the American Anti- Slavery 
Society had no authoritative relation to the Aboli- 
tionists as a whole, it was of decided value. A 
policy thus endorsed stood before non- Abolitionists 
as the general sentiment of the Abolitionist body, 
when in point of fact the stay-at-home Abolition- 
ists, necessarily the greater number, might be far 
indeed from accepting the declarations made at 
New York. It will be remembered that at the 
meeting in 1839 the society had been purged of the 
less idealistic and radical part of its membership, 
and afterward consisted almost entirely of inexo- 
rable "foes to compromise." 

It was before this purified assembly, the "Old 
Organization," that Garrison's declaration was to be 
brought. To avoid even the semblance of exercis- 
ing a dictatorial influence. Garrison decided not to 
be present, although he "regretted to be absent on 
account of the stormy aspect of things, created by 
the diabolism of the New York daily press." 

During the convention, the debate proved that 
the majority of the members, led by Henry C. 



242 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

Wriglit, Edmuud Quincy, Abby Kelley, and 
Wendell Phillips, the ablest and most consistent 
of the radical wing of the radical Abolitionists, 
were in favor of Garrison's propositions ; but it 
was thought best to let the meeting pass without 
pressing for a direct vote. The same policy was 
followed throughout the year, the minds of Aboli- 
tionists being familiarized with the disunion idea 
by the introduction at local meetings of resolutions 
iu favor of separation, usually discussed and laid 
on the table. Garrison himself, on May 12, 1842, 
put his doctrine at the head of his editorial 
columns, where he kept it for the rest of the year : 

" A Eepeal of the Union Between Northern 
Liberty a.nd Southern Slavery is Essential 
to the Abolitictn of the One and the Preser- 
vation OF THE Other.'' 

Sooner or later the mere ripening of Garrison's 
own logic must have brought his mind to the views 
which he adopted somewhat earlier on account of 
the denial of the right to petitiou, the refusal of the 
right to free speech, and the violence done to the 
comity of the states by the South. He saw in the 
Constitution of the United States an agreement to 
prot^ect slavery. That the agreement was made at 
a time when its importance was not foreseen, and 
when the hope was confidently and not unreasonably 
held, both in the North and in the South, that 
slavery would disappear of itself, were in his mind 
no palliations for the bargain. The existence of the 
Constitution depended npon an agreement guaran- 
teeing the rights of the slaveholder. This, in his 



DISUNION SENTIMENT 243 

view, was an immoral contract, and the whole 
compact was void on account of it. Between Garri- 
son's and Calhoun's reasoning there was no jjoint 
of difference except the radical oi)position on the 
fundamental matter of the righteousness of slavery. 
To Garrison slavery was wicked, the Constitution • 
was formed and founded on the support of wicked- 
ness, and therefore was ab initio of no force and 
effect. There was no place in his mind for vague 
feelings of affection for national unity. To him as * 
to all radical reformers every moral idea was the 
result of a plain process of inference from immutable . 
general principles, and was applicable, without 
shades or modifications or exceptions, in all fields 
of moral activity. From such a point of view there 
is no answer to his conclusions. If a nation can be 
formed by bond and agreement. Garrison was right ; 
and the only sound answer to his arguments is to 
be found in recognizing that the United States is a 
nation like other nations, the existence of which is 
due to deeper forces than paper agreements and 
contracts between states. 

To Garrison the year 1842 must have been one 
of precious memories. Then first he reached intel- 
lectual consistency, and delivered to the world his 
final message of importance. He had purged his 
soul of complicity with guilt, and was blest with 
an inward security and peace even greater than he 
had felt in previous years. In his outer life, the 
year was full of action and still more of bereave- 
ment and suffering. In January his wife's sister, 
Mary Benson, had died under his roof, and he had 



244 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKBISON 

spoken at her funeral such words of moral inspira- 
tion as seemed to him appropriate. In October his 
only brother, James H. Garrison, a victim of in- 
temperance and of the savage ferocity with which 
seamen were then treated, both in the merchant 
marine and the navy, had come to the end of his 
wretched life, likewise in Garrison's house, whither 
he had crept a« to a last refuge. In the remorse 
following a debauch, in 1811, he laid plans to take 
his own life. Prevented from executing his pur- 
pose, he found an asylum during the brief remainder 
of his days at his brother's house. When his body 
was committed to the ground, his brother arranged 
that the funeral should be as "plain, simple, and 
free as possible," and that "liberty of speech " 
should be granted to all who should attend. Gar- 
rison himself frankly drew from James's life the 
lessons against war and intemperance which his un- 
happy brother's career had helped to teach him. 
The Garrisons have told this narrative of a wrecked 
life with naked sincerity, but have not neglected an 
opportunity to portray the evils of our old naval 
system. Theirs is the unfaltering patriotism which 
smites to heal and spares not. 

Besides performing his manifold duties on the 
Liberator and discharging his obligations as kins- 
man. Garrison was busy lecturing all summer, going 
in July to Cape Cod, and afterward to Maine and 
New Hampshire. In November he for the first 
time visited "the West," — that is, central and 
western New York. The journey was undertaken to 
meet the inroads of the "New Organization" and 



DISUNION SENTIMENT 245 

tlie Liberty party on the "Old Organization.'* The 
members of the Liberty party had promptly striven 
to rid themselves of the odium attaching to Garri- 
son's disunion sentiments by expressing their de- 
votion to the Union and the Constitution. Salmon 
P. Chase, the Ohio leader of the party, addressed a 
letter to its convention, soon after assembled in 
Syracuse, in which he contrasted the political with 
the '^ come- outer'' Abolitionists, and expressed the 
conviction that the Constitution was opposed to 
slavery, which it condemned and localized, and did 
not support. Other members of the party, among 
them William Goodell and Charles T. Torrey, 
directly attacked the American Anti-Slavery Society 
on the ground that by failing to support independent 
political action, it had become a mere annex to the 
old parties. Some of the most vigorous lecturers of 
the Old OrgauizatioD, particularly Garrison, Abby 
Kelley, and S. S. Foster, were accordingly sent to 
the region where the Liberty i^arty was strongest, 
and where the convention had just been held. At 
Syracuse, Foster's violent abuse and Garrison's 
stern condemnation of the Church and clergy pro- 
voked disturbances approaching a riot. Eotten 
eggs were thrown, benches were broken, and the 
opponents of abolition took possession of the meet- 
ing. Threats of tarring and feathering the two 
men were freely made, but were not carried out. 
At Utica the beginnings of disorder were quelled 
by the firmness of the mayor. The exposure and 
strenuous exertion of the journey caused Garrison 
to take cold ; and comiug home with his system de- 



246 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

bilitated, he was immediately seized by the con- 
tagion of scarlet fever, then raging in his house- 
hold. There was a babe of a few months to be 
cared for, — Charles Pollen Garrison, born September 
9th, — and Mrs. Garrison herself had been seriously 
ill with rheumatism. The attack from which Gar- 
rison suffered was very severe. ^ ' He has been as 
ill," a friend wrote, ^' as a man can be and live." 

Toward the end of January, 1843, he returned to 
his desk with his health still frail, and throughout 
the year suffered much distress from a swelling in the 
left side, which never afterward left him. The cause, 
not certainly known during his life, was after his 
death ascertained to be an enlargement of the spleen. 

He had now reached the final phrasing of his 
disunion doctrines. The less vigorous language at 
the head of the editorial columns of the Liberator 
was replaced by a resolution of his passed by the 
Massachusetts Anti -Slavery Society at its annual 
meeting in January, 1843 : ' ' Resolved, That the 
compact which exists between the North and the 
South is ^ a covenant with death and an agreement 
with hell^ — involving both parties in atrocious 
criminality — and should be annulled." The time 
was not even yet ripe for a decisive vote by the 
American Society, which at its May meeting laid 
on the table a resolution of Garrison's making the 
repudiation of the Constitution a test of consistent 
Abolitionism. The general sympathy of the meet- 
ing with Garrison's views is shown by the fact that 
although the resolutions were not voted, he was 
elected president for the ensuiog year. 



DISUA^ION SENTIMENT 247 

The election of Garrison at this time was more 
than a declaration of principles ; it was nailing the 
colors to the mast of a gallant but crippled vessel, 
over the sinking of which its enemies were already 
exulting. The weakness of the Old Organization 
had become so manifest that the leaders of the new 
had coolly proposed a union meeting at the 1843 
anniversary ; and Leavitt, the editor of the Eman- 
ciyator^ had affirmed that to maintain the society in 
existence would probably require the assistance of 
the committee which had rebelled against Gar- 
rison^ s ascendency. Even the strongest and firmest 
leaders of the American An ti- Slavery Society pro- 
posed to abandon the annual meeting in New York 
as an unnecessary expense, and to transfer the 
headquarters to Boston ; and only the flat refusal of 
the Boston members of the executive committee 
deprived the enemies of the society of this oppor- 
tunity to triumph. 

A letter from Edmund Quincy to the Irish aboli- 
tionist Richard D. Webb gives a quaint and vivid 
picture of Garrison as presiding officer : '' Garrison 
makes an excellent president at a public meeting 
where the order of speakers is in some measure 
arranged, as he has great felicity in introducing 
and interlocuting remarks; but at a meeting for 
debate he does not answer so well, as he is rather 
apt, with all the innocence and simplicity in the 
world, to do all the talking himself. This, how- 
ever, we shall arrange by having Francis Jackson 
to act as V. P. on such occasions." 

During the year 1843 Garrison's private affairs 



248 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

were in such a condition that without the strength 
given him by his devotion to a single great object 
he would have become a prey to paralyzing 
anxiety. His health continued so poor that in 
June and July he was obliged to go for rest and 
recuperation to the Northampton Community. 
^'He went there for rest," laughed Edmund 
Quincy, * ' and the way he rests himself is to lecture 
every night in the neighboring towns, and on 
Sundays in Northampton in the open air ! " During 
his vacation he took a long drive up and down the 
Connecticut Valley with his wife and his old friend 
N. P. Rogers, his companion in the journey 
through the White Mountains. He insisted on 
exhibiting his skill as a driver, and was so mala- 
droit as to overturn the carriage while crossing a 
stream. His wife and child were almost drowned, 
but escaped with no more serious results than the 
dislocation of Mrs. Garrison's wrist. The injured 
member was treated, with temporary success, but 
was so weakened by the accident that it gave way 
upon a second injury, becoming permanently lame. 
When Garrison went back from Northampton to 
his work, he rented a new house at No. 13 Pine 
Street, Boston, where he made his home until 1850. 
The receipts from the Liberator had fallen so low 
that at times he had to borrow money from his 
friends to pay his ordinary domestic expenses. 
The reasons for the small circulation of the 
Liberator were i^rimarily public apathy and the 
factions within the Abolitionist body ; yot the 
physical weakness of Garrison and his constitu- 



DISUXIOjS^ sentiment 249 

tional procrastination had laid the conduct of the 
paper open to criticism. His good friends, Edmund 
Quincy and Maria W. Chapman, had as much as 
possible relieved him of his duties as editor during 
his long lecture tours and his illness ; and Quincy, 
on yielding up his responsibility, remonstrated 
with Garrison in the kindest and frankest manner. 
He criticized the careless and hasty make-up of the 
paper, the frequent absence of editorials, and the 
negligence displayed in some of those that did 
appear, and urged Garrison to do his work more 
systematically. As his sons say in their biography 
of their father,^ ''The volume of matter, in manu- 
script and in print, relating to the cause was 
growing with tremendous rapidity. As a rule, 
besides reading proof. Garrison shared in the me- 
chanical work of the paper. Add the interruptions 
to which he was exposed as the leader of the Aboli- 
tionists ; his lecture engagements ; his anti-slavery 
hospitality ; his constant anxiety concerning his 
means of support, and the wonder is that he found 
leisure to write as much as he did, whether for the 
Liberator J the Massachusetts Board, the American 
Society, or in his own private correspondence.'^ 

In January, 1844, the agitation begun in 1841 
was continued ; and finally, at the May meeting of 
the American Society in New York, a large ma- 
jority adopted not only an expression of disunion 
principles from the pen of Garrison, but a much 
more violent resolution introduced by Wendell 
Phillips; — ''The only exodus of the slave to 

Life, Vol. Ill, p. 87. 



250 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISOK 

freedom, unless it be one of blood, must be over the 
ruins of the present American Church and the 
grave of the present Union. ' ' 

Weighty protests against the passage of the 
resolutions had been made by leading and devoted 
Abolitionists, especially by those of legal and 
practical experience, among them Ellis Gray 
Loring, David Lee Child, William A. White, 
Arnold Buffum, and James Miller McKim, later 
one of the founders of the Nation and the father of 
Wendell Phillips Garrison's first wife. The oppo- 
sition was renewed at the New England Anti- 
Slavery Convention held later in the same mouth. 
The impression produced on Edmund Quincy by 
the debates at the New England meeting is pre- 
sented with his usual vivacity : 

''The debates were very fine. . . . But in 
fact there was but one side. The arguments in 
favor of acting under the existing government, or, 
rather, the casuistry by which swearing to do 
wicked things which at the time you don't mean to 
do was justified, were enough to convince any 
reasonable person of the truth of what they op- 
posed. [The Eev. John] Pierpont's speech was the 
most extraordinary piece of Jesuitism that I ever 
heard. The world's people among the audience 
were shocked at it. An old president of a bank, no 
Abolitionist, who was in from curiosity, told me 
that the business of the world could not go on for a 
day on his principles, if fairly carried out ; that 
they struck at the root of all human society, and 
would destroy all confidence of man in man. And 



DISUNION SENTIMENT 251 

yet this is the only process by which he can recon- 
cile his support of the Liberty party with morality. 
The vote surprised us all. At one time we 
thought it might not pass. Latterly we thought it 
would be carried by a small majority. But when 
the roll was called, it seemed as if there were no 
* nays' at all, they came dropping in at such distant 
intervals. The vote stood 250 to 24.'" 

Among the twenty -four nays were those of Maria 
White, William A. White's sister, and of his col- 
lege friend and her betrothed, James Russell 
Lowell. The two young people, — ''the glorious 
girl with the spirit eyes,"— Lowell's own words — 
and her lover, ''slight and small, with rosy cheeks 
and starry eyes and wavy hair parted in the mid- 
dle " (such is the picture of him drawn by Dr. E. 
E. Hale)— had listened with the ardor of pure, 
warm youth to the myriad voices of their time. 
Both had long held abolition principles, and 
within a few years each had formally entered the 
Anti-Slavery Society. Miss White and Lowell, 
under her influence, had also joined the "temper- 
ance movement." Both were genuine poets, though 
unequally gifted with the power of expression. 
Imaginative sympathy and a sense of history pre- 
vented them from being entirely in harmony with 
their associates. Miss White could see how the 
Abolitionists themselves were sacrificed to their 
philanthropic energy. " They do not modify their 
words and voices. They are like people who live 
with the deaf, and hear waterfalls, whose voices be- 
1 Life, Vol. Ill, p. 111. 



252 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

come high aud harsh. '^ No matter how intense the 
anti-slavery spirit of Lowell aud Miss White, they 
themselves would never become hardened or nar- 
rowed. They could have sentiments about their 
country, and love it with all its imi)erfections. As 
Lowell writes,^ "I do not agree with the abolition- 
ist leaders in their disunion and non-voting theories. 
. . . They treat ideas as ignorant persons do 
cherries. They think them unwholesome unless 
they are swallowed stones and all." Lowell soon 
after undertook the duties of editorial writer for 
several anti-slavery papers ; and the contrast be- 
tween his articles and Garrison's is a striking index 
to the characters of the two men. Garrison for 
thirty-five years kept sending in blows over his oi3- 
ponent's heart, and was ready at the end of every 
round to begin a new one in the old way, until 
his antagonist should be beaten down. Lowell, in 
his lightest papers, brings the matter siih specie 
(Bternitatis, and makes the literary spirit always 
felt by showing a certain detached interest in the 
situation, so that his papers may still be read with 
delight, something that cannot in all fairness be 
said of much that Garrison wrote, forceful and 
sound English as it mostly is. Such articles must 
at the time have been far less effective than Gar- 
rison's, as lacking deadly intensity and immediate- 
ness of purpose. Lowell's verses and wit must 
often have seemed to his associates mere ''Delilahs 
of the imagination," seducing him from his more 
strenuous duties as a reformer. The ^^uays" of 
» Leiiera, Vol. I, p. 125. 



DISUNION SENTIMENT 253 

Maria White and James Eussell Lowell were the 
respouse to the cry for disunion made by poetry 
and the imagination. 

The agitation for the disunion declaration re- 
newed the enthusiasm of the Old Organization ; and 
in time the declaration was accepted in New Eng- 
land and the Middle States, which antedated the 
formation of the Union. The Western Abolition- 
ists, inhabitants of states which were the offspring 
of the Union, and which had by Federal action 
been '^dedicated to freedom," could not be brought 
to approve disunion. The Ohio society went for- 
mally on record as opposing any narrowing of the 
basis of the general abolitionist movement. 

That body of "New Organization" Abolitionists 
who had formed the Liberty party had of course no 
interest in the discussion except as a justification of 
their policy, and as capital against their rivals, the 
" Old Organization." For the view held by many 
of them that the Constitution was essentially an 
anti-slavery document. Garrison had nothing but 
scorn. ''The truth is," he wrote, ''the misnamed 
Liberty party is under the control of as ambitious, 
unprincipled, and crafty leaders as is either the 
Whig or Democratic party ; and no other proof of 
this assertion is needed than their unblushing 
denial of the great object of the national compact, 
namely, union at the sacrifice of the colored popu- 
lation of the United States. Their new interpreta- 
tions of the Constitution are a bold rejection of the 
facts of history, and a gross insult to the intelligence 
of the age, and certainly never can be carried into 



254 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON 

effect without dissolving the Union by provoking a 
civil war." ^ It is perhaps in the last words that the 
heart of Garrison's opposition to the Union is to be 
found. In prompt disunion he saw the only alter- 
native to war as a means of escape from the abso- 
lute domination of the whole country by slavery ; 
and war he was bound by his principles to do his 
utmost to j)revent. In this contest he had the bet- 
ter of the logic, for both sides rested on the ' ' false 
bottom of American political thinking,'^ the Con- 
stitution ; but the truth and the future were with 
his opponents. His function was to stir and 
awaken the slumbering conscience of the people. 
The men whom he scorned and reprobated had 
likewise a work to do in giving practical form to 
the indistinct demands, hardly more than senti- 
ments, of the North. 

The success of the disunion propaganda added no 
new members to the abolition societies. The earlier 
contest followed by the great schism, it might seem, 
would have driven out all but the most uncompro- 
mising idealists, yet the mooting of the new ques- 
tion decimated even this Gideon's troop. Argue as 
^ Garrison might to show that the adoption of the 
disunion declaration was a mere majority vote, the 
passage of the declaration made the acceptance 
of the disunion idea in fact a test, a touchstone, 
of thoroughgoing Abolitionism. There were few 
Americans who could bear to hear the words of 
Wendell Phillips, when the crowd in Faneuil Hall 
howled down the speakers at a meeting called in 

^Life, Vol. Ill, p. 116. 



DISUNION SENTIMENT 255 

1842 to protest against the return of the fugitive 
slave Latimer: ^'When I look at these crowded 
thousands, and see them trample on their con- 
sciences and the rights of their fellow men at the 
bidding of a piece of parchment, I say, my curse 
be on the Constitution of the United States." 

It is probable that criticism of Garrison's disunion ''' 
sentiments will outlast all other objections to his 
marvelous career — to his ''infidelity," his com- 
mination of the clergy and of reputable men with ' 
whom he did not agree, his peace and non-resistant 
views. His preachment of disunion and his hatred ^ 
of the Constitution were proofs, so it has been and 
will continue to be said, of disloyalty to his native 
land, even then with all its limitations and faults 
no mean country, of which he was in the usual ac- 
ceptance of the word, a citizen, receiving its protec- 
tion and sharing its undoubted blessings. It must ^ 
be said, without hope, however, of definitely dis- 
posing in some minds of the charge, that Garrison ^ 
really saw no other way out of the difficulty con- 
fronting a determined South and a very unde- 
termined North. He did not believe and repeatedly^ 
said that he did not believe that the South would 
secede. 

The shot that boomed sullenly over Charleston har- 
bor on that April day in 1861, calling on the United 
States of America to surrender its own property to 
a seceded portion of it, was as great and as genuine 
a surprise to William Lloyd Garrison as to every 
other inhabitant of the Northern states. Well 
might he now claim that the Union was dissolved, 



256 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON 

iu fact if not in theory. Out of this dissolution 
arose a new union of states, and to this Union he 
could and did adhere to the extent of supporting, 
without subservieucj^, the Republican party after its 
period of decline had set iu. Another surprise in 
store for him was the immediate lally of vast num- 
bers of the Democratic party to the aid of this now 
dismembered Union. He could not have foreseen 
such an event. So far as he could gaze into the 
future he saw only an impasse — a union to be con- 
tinued only with slavery — and this he could not 
supi^ort. If this be treason then his hostile critics 
will have to make the most of it for all time to 
come. 

Garrison at this period had other subjects of 
thought than disunion. The year 1844 saw the 
political cami)aigu ending in Polk's election. In 
that year the question of the annexation of Texas 
was before the American people ; and a multitude 
of topics connected with public policj" called for 
discussion in the Liberator. Thc^n took place the 
acts of extraordinary violence offered to the learned 
and upright commissioner, Samuel Hoar, when he 
went to Charleston to collect evidence preparatory 
to a trial before the Federal court for the purpose of 
establishing the rights of Massachusetts seamen of 
color in South Carolina. In the same year the Rev. 
Charles T. Torrey was imprisoned in Baltimore for 
activity on behalf of the slave. Garrison sent such 
aid in money to his old opponent as he could afford, 
and strove to excite public detestation of his im- 
prisonment. Torrey gratefully acknowledged Gar- 



DISUNION SENTIMENT 257 

rison's magnanimity, and in a letter to a friend prac- 
tically expressed repentance for his earlier course in 
contributing to the establishment of the New Or- 
ganization. But the incident which caused Garri- 
son most concern in this year was a painful diffi- 
culty with his old friend Eogers, in whose comrade- 
ship he had taken such joy. Eogers was an extreme 
'*no-organizationist." A president, aboard, or an 
executive committee was feared by him little less, 
and abhorred with no more allowance, than a poli- 
tician or a slaveholder. A contest arose as to the 
title to the Herald of Freedom, the New Hamp- 
shire anti-slavery paper, of which Eogers was then 
editor and his son-in-law, J. E. French, the printer. 
Both were opposed to the executive committee of 
the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society. Garri- 
son took the side of the committee, and Eogers 
never forgave him. In this year, finally, Garrison's 
heart was gladdened by the birth of a daughter, 
Helen Frances, following four sons. She became 
the wife of Henry Villard. 



CHAPTER XI 

TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR 

Among the first effects of the growing strength of 
anti-slavery sentiment among the j)eople of the 
North was the energetic opposition to the annexa- 
tion of Texas and the war with Mexico. The forces 
active in causing the annexation of Texas were by 
no means so simple as has often been represented. 
On the part of the leaders who planned and carried 
out the measure, it was a coldly devised and 
adroitly executed political act, intended to enlarge 
the area and increase the strength of slavery in the 
United States. Yet it was not, properly speaking, 
a ''conspiracy," for the means would not have been 
condemned if the end were approved, and those 
who employed the means believed in the end. As 
regards the public support given to annexation, the 
real strength of the movement lay in an idea, a sen- 
timent, of national greatness and unity, which 
looked toward bringing as large an area of terri- 
tory as possible into the United States, and toward 
extending the country from ocean to ocean and from 
the Great Lakes to the Gulf, thus making it the 
greatest and most powerful of all nations, — com- 
mercially self-sufficient, overwhelmingly mighty in 
population and wealth, a world in itself. 

This idea was not created by reason, but by the 
much more powerful forces of imagination and 



TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR 259 

emotioD. Texas, at the time of the renewal of the 
efforts to annex it, had achieved its independence 
of Mexico, was populated by Americans, and was 
in effect a sister state to Mississippi and Louisiana. 
There were genuine and not unnatural fears, zeal- 
ously encouraged by the diplomacy of Texas, that 
European states would gain a preponderance in the 
new republic. If the sectional division between the 
slaveholding and the non-slaveholding states had 
not been in existence, there would have been no 
hesitation or delay in carrying out annexation ; and 
the sentiment of nationality, the vision of a vaster 
union, was sufficiently strong to quiet in the minds 
of a great proportion of the citizens of the North 
the vague and incoherent stirrings of their half- 
formed moral revulsion against slavery. Southern 
politicians, of course, were jubilant over the 
prospect of adding a new slave state as a make- 
weight against the advancing greatness of the 
Northwest. Nationalism was once more linked 
with slavery ; and once more, to the eyes of Aboli- 
tionists, the Constitution appeared as ''a covenant 
with death and an agreement with hell." 

Nor did the prospect of annexing Texas fill with 
horror the professed Abolitionists alone. The 
legislature of Massachusetts voted that annexation 
would not be binding on the state,— a vote which, 
literally interpreted, was an expression of disunion 
principles. At meetings called by politicians to 
protest against annexation, Garrison was received 
with respect by men who would have mobbed him 
fifteen years earlier. The burden of his speeches 



260 WILLIAM LLOYD GABRISON 

was his Delenda est Carthago^ — '^No UDion with 
slaveholders ! ' ' Charles Sumuer bears interesting 
testimony to Garrison's power as an orator on one 
of these occasions. "He spoke with natural 
eloquence. Hillard spoke exquisitely. His words 
descended in a golden shower ; but Garrison's fell 
in fiery rain. It seemed doubtful at one time if the 
Abolitionists would not succeed in carrying the 
convention.'' ^ In taking part in these meetings, 
Garrison was of course engaging in political 
activitj^ ; but since in point of fact he never really 
kept out of politics, and was now pursuing a line 
of conduct that involved no submission to the 
Constitution of the United States and that seemed 
to him to promise an escape from civil war, he is 
not properly chargeable with any real inconsistency 
for taking the course he followed. His efforts and 
those of the men with whom he was for the time 
associated were unsuccessful. Even in New Eng- 
land the national spirit in the end proved the 
stronger. In the West there was a lively enthusi- 
asm for the addition to the power of the country 
which aversion to the extension of slave territory 
could not overcome. Finally, the annexation of 
Texas was consummated, shocking and discourag- 
ing all who shared in the anti-slavery movement. 

During the summer and autumn of 1846 Garrison 
was again in the British Isles. The occasion of his 
going was a fierce agitation which followed the 
acceptance by the Free Church of Scotland of 
money subscribed by the evangelical churches of 

UJfe, Vol. Ill, p. 137. 



TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR 261 

Charleston. The Free Church owed its origin to 
a belief in the right of the congregations to con- 
trol the appointment of their own ministeis, and 
it received aid from those all over the world who 
sympathized with that principle. As it happened, 
public sentiment in Great Britain, just at the 
time of the ''ecumenical collection" for the bene- 
fit of the Free Church, had been outraged by the 
condemnation to death at Charleston of John L. 
Brown, a young northern white man, for aiding in 
the escape of a slave woman of mixed blood whom 
he loved and j)urposed to marry. The sentence 
was not executed, but the horror felt in England 
and Scotland did not abate. All over the latter 
country spread the excitement against taking the 
tainted money from Charleston. ''Old Scotland 
boils like a pot," wrote back Frederick Douglass. 
Splashes of red paint typifying the slaves' blood 
staining the gift were daubed on walls and steps, 
and the whole town of Edinburgh was placarded 
with the words, "Send back the money!" The 
money, however, was kept as Garrison predicted 
that it would be. " The laity I believe would send 
it back, but the divinity prevents it." 

Between the American Abolitionists and a large 
body of the English people there was a close bond. 
The imperial situation of Great Britain compelled 
its citizens to have regard to the treatment of 
dependent populations at a distance from the centre 
of government ; and at least from the time of the 
impeachment of Warren Hastings, benevolently 
energetic men had always been ready to work upon 



262 WILLIAJVI LLOYD GARRISON 

public opinion in behalf of those who, in their 
belief, were subjected to tyranny by ''the man on 
the spot," and thus to bring the great weight of 
imperial power to bear upon those suspected of 
oppression. The abolition of the slave trade and 
the emancipation of the negroes in the West Indies 
had been effected by such philanthropists. English 
public opinion had come to detest slavery, and 
those alike who were stirred by an independent 
love of freedom and who drifted with the current 
of convention felt sympathy with the American 
Abolitionists, and respect for their leader. A 
number of Englishmen cooperated with him and 
aided his cause as much as possible, — often, it 
may be remarked, with a disregard for patriotic 
prepossessions which would not have been wel- 
come to any one whose Americanism was less 
detached than Garrison's. Some of these English 
friends and admirers, especially George Thompson, 
urged the Emancipation Society to invite Garrison 
to visit England, and to be present at the Anti- 
Slavery Conference in London in August. The 
mild climate, the pleasant social relations, and the 
freedom from many anxieties which Garrison found 
in England always made a visit to that country 
beneficial to his health and spirits. Moreover, at 
the moment of receiving the invitation of his Eng- 
lish friends, it seemed important to stigmatize the 
Free Church for fellowship with slaveholders, and 
to defend himself from the retaliatory charges of 
infidelity. A fund to pay his expenses was raised 
in America, and he set out in July. In England he 



TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR 263 

addressed several reform organizations, speaking 
with an asperity that irritated many of his hearers. 
He was active in establishing an Anti- Slavery 
League to cooperate with the American Anti- 
Slavery Society, and was ''trotted about from meet- 
ing to meeting, in public and in private/' visiting 
Ireland and canvassing Scotland twice. On the 
later journey throughout Scotland, the anti-slavery 
ladies of Edinburgh made him a present of a silver 
tea-service, on which he had to pay duty when he 
brought it home. About a month after his return 
occurred the reunion of the Abolitionists at the 
anti- slavery bazaar, which Lowell describes wittily 
in the composition in Hudibrastic verse from 
which the description of the three chief anti- 
clericals has already been quoted : 

" There's Garrison, his features very 
Benign for an incendiary, 
Beaming forth sunshine through his glasses 
On the surrounding lads and lasses, 
(No bee could blither be or brisker,) — 
A Pickwick somehow turned John Ziska, 
His bump of firmness swelling up 
Like a rye cupcake from its cup. 
And there, too, was his English tea-set, 
Which in his ear a kind of flea set. 
His Uncle Samuel for its beauty 
Demanding sixty dollars duty. 
('Twas natural Sam should serve his trunk ill, 
For G., you know, has cut his uncle.)" 

The rest of 1846 and the greater part of 1847 were 
spent by Garrison in the usual routine of his life, 



264 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

writing editorials, lecturing, and attending con- 
ventions. He continued to denounce the annexation 
of Texas and the consequent war with Mexico, but 
instead of regarding the matter as he had at first, 
merely in the light of a triumph of diabolism, he 
saw some promise for the future in the aroused 
feeling of the North. He sustained the Wilmot. 
Proviso, though without enthusiasm, disunion being 
the only genuinely effective policy in his opinion. 
Finally, he did not cease to urge his non-resistance 
and "come-outer" views of church and state, ever 
provoking and ever repelling charges of infidelity. 
In August, 1847, he first crossed the Alleghanies, 
going at the invitation of the Western Anti-Slavery 
Society to address the convention at New Lyme, 
Ohio. His plan was to travel out through Pennsyl- 
vania and back through New York, and to deliver 
addresses on the way in both states. Ohio had in 
its history much to interest the Abolitionists. 
Liberty- loving New Englanders had begun the 
settlement of the Western Eeserve, under the ordi- 
nance of 1787, which forbade slavery in the '' North- 
west." In Ohio, slavery was not as in New England, 
a monster of the mind, but a dread fact, in tangible 
existence across the river which formed its southern 
boundary. Hence the anti-slavery movement in 
the western state was more intense and picturesque 
than in New England. It had never sunk into such 
lethargy as had the eastern movement at the time 
when Garrison's activity began, but had continued 
in vigorous life with little dependence on him. On 
account of the geographical situation of the state. 



TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR 265 

it included some of the most active lines of the 
Underground Eailroad. In Ohio the Church had 
exhibited a very unusual opposition to slavery. 
There Weld had led the secession from Lane Semi- 
nary, and there was Oberlin College. There were 
the political leaders, Chase, Morris, and Giddings. 
There, too, were the abolitionist clergymen, the 
eccentric but forceful Finney and the resolute and 
brilliant Mahan. In spite of Garrison's ill health, 
it would have been strange if he had not looked 
forward to the journey with pleasure. 

The railroad from Philadelphia toward Pittsburg 
ended at Chambersburg, on the eastern slope of the 
mountains. Garrison's comments on his journey 
through Pennsylvania sound strange to the present 
day traveler who compares the experiences of a 
passage by the same line on the steel cars' and over 
the smooth road-bed of the Pennsylvania Railroad, 
with those of the journey, say from Boston to 
Providence. He says, ''Though the cars (com- 
pared with our Eastern ones) look as if they were 
made a century ago, and are quite uncomfortable, 
yet the ride was far from being irksome, on account 
of the all-pervading beauty and opulence of the 
country through which we passed. ' ' ' The passenger 
cars of the time were constructed on the character- 
istic American plan, with a passageway down the 
middle ; but the best of them were roughly built 
and uncomfortable. An English traveler calls them 
long wooden boxes. 

Garrison's companion was Frederick Douglass, 

^ Liberator, Vol. XYII, p. 135. 



266 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISOI^ 

who was subjected to frequent iusult and sometimes 
to violence. When the travelers reached Chambers- 
burg, they found that their tickets obliged them to 
separate, one going on a stage ahead of the other. 
The weather was very hot, and Garrison described 
the stage journey through the mountains as quite 
overpowering. It seemed to him almost intermi- 
nable, — almost equal to the trip across the Atlantic. 
After the parting, Douglass was not permitted to sit 
at the eating table on the way, and for two days and 
nights scarcely tasted a morsel of food. The conse- 
quence was a condition of great debility, which pre- 
vented him from speaking with effect. 

The audiences at most of the frequent meetings 
on the way were kindly disposed, except for oc- 
casional demonstrations against Douglass ; and those 
at Korristown and Pittsburg were enthusiastic. 
On the other hand, at New Brighton, " a small vil- 
lage of eight hundred inhabitants, . . . the 
people generally remain incorrigible. ... No 
place could be obtained for our meeting excepting 
the upper room of a large store, which was crowded to 
excess, afternoon and evening, several hundred per- 
sons being present, and many other persons not 
being able to obtain admittance. In the evening, 
there were some symptoms of pro-slavery rowdyism 
outside the building, but nothing beyond the yell- 
ing of young men and boys. Over our heads in 
the room, were piled up across the beams many 
barrels of flour ; and while we were speaking, the 
mice were busy in nibbling at them, causing their 
contents to whiten some of our dresses, and think- 



TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR 267 

ing, perchance, that our speeches needed to be a 
little more floury ^ ^ ^^ — a pun so atrocious that it 
could have proceeded only from a man of kindh 
and simple nature, quite innocent of any sense of 
intellectual guilt. 

The anniversary of the Western Anti-Slavery 
Society was held August 18-20. The accommo- 
dations of the village of New Lj^me were inade- 
quate for tlie expected concourse ; and a tent had 
been set up, capable of holding an audience of four 
thousand. On the night after Garrison's arrival 
the tent collapsed, in a storm of wind and rain, 
into a huge water-soaked mass of canvas, and was 
put vl\) again with great difficulty. The interest of 
the meeting centred in the debates between the 
Disunionists and the political Abolitionists. It is 
pleasant to observe with what warmth i&arrison 
recognized the moral courage and the valuable serv- 
ice of the congressmen, Giddings and Tilden, 
opposed as lie was on princii)le to their acceptance 
of the Constitution. The imported speakers. Garri- 
son, Douglass, and Stephen S. Foster, were the 
leaders against the Union, while Giddings was its 
chief defender. Garrison wrote : '^Mr. Gpddiugs] 
exhibited the utmost kindness and generosity toward 
us, and alluded to me in very handsome terms, as 
also to Douglass ; but his arguments were very 
specious, and I think we had with us the understand- 
ing and conscience of an overwhelming majority of 
those who listened to the debate. As a large pro- 
portion of the Abolitionists in this section of the 

» Life, Vol. Ill, p. 194. 



268 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISOK 

country belong to the Liberty party, we have had 
to bring them to the same test of judgment as 
the Whigs and the Democrats, for supporting a 
pro-slavery Constitution ; but they are generally 
very candid, and incomparably more kind and 
friendly to us than those of their party at the 
East." ' 

The courtesy of Giddings was no doubt perfectly 
sincere ; but its warmth may have been increased 
by the fact that Garrison was his unconscious polit- 
ical ally. The Western Eeserve had been a home 
of the Liberty party ; but with the evident political 
failure of the party, the way was open to the Garri- 
sonian Abolitionists to i)roclaim their more radical 
doctrines. Abby Kelley and Foster had evangel- 
ized the region and had prepared the waj^ for Gar- 
rison. Giddings at this time was striving desper- 
ately to hold to the Whigs, and proclaiming that 
the objects of the Abolitionists could best be reached 
without the new party. The argument of Garrison, 
as the recognized leader of radical Abolitionism, 
was a powerful though unintentional reinforcement 
to Giddings' s position. 

Garrison records the impression made upon him, 
as the dense mass of people moved off home at the 
close of the meeting, by the long array of vehicles, 
dispersing in every direction, some to go as far as 
a hundred miles. One old colored man rode on 
horseback three hundred miles to be present. The 
meeting over, the journey home began. Garrison 
was driven from town to town of the Western Ee- 

^ Life, Vol. Ill, p. 197. 



TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAE 269 

serve by local friends of the cause, speaking, several 
times in the large tent, to good audiences every- 
where. The engagements made for him were so 
many that he had no time at all for rest. Doug- 
lass's weakness and sore throat continued for sev- 
eral days and served to increase tlie burden upon 
Garrison's shoulders. On the way, he had the satis- 
faction of visiting Oberlin. The institution inter- 
ested him as an anti-slavery college, to the founding 
of which he had given a helpful word, and as an 
important station on the Underground Eailroad. 
AYhen he reached the college the graduation exer- 
cises of the theological seminary were taking place. 
' * Two of the graduates took occasion to denounce 
Hhe fanaticism of Come-outerism and Disunion- 
ism,' and to make a thrust at those who in the 
guise of anti-slavery, temperance, etc., are endeavor- 
ing to promote 'infidelity' ! Prof. [Charles G.] 
Finney ^ in his address to the graduates, gave them 
some very good advice — telling them that denouuc- 
iug Come-outerism, on the one hand, or talking about 
the importance of preserving harmony and uniou in 
the Church on the other, would avail them nothing. 
They must go heartily into all the reforms of the 
age, and be 'anti-devil all over' — and if they were 
not ready to do this he advised them to go to the 
workshop, the farm, or anywhere else, rather than 
into the ministry. This was talking very plainly — 
but if these young men would attempt to carry his 

* Fourteen years back pastor of the Chatham Street Chapel in 
New York wlieu it was raided by tlie Tammany Hall mob on 
the organization of the New York City Anti-Slavery Society. 



270 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

advice into practice, where could they find churches 
and salaries'?" ' 

The next day but one the visitors began a series 
of meetings, speaking chiefly upon Conie-outerism 
from church and state. President Mahan entered 
the debate, defending the United States Constitu- 
tion as an anti-slavery instrument, and consequently 
supporting the Liberty party ; but as Garrison 
thought, he did not make a strong impression. 
Among the persons whom Garrison met at Oberlin 
was Miss Lucy Stone, afterward well known as a lec- 
turer in favor of woman suffrage. He said : ''She is 
a very superior young woman, and has a soul as free 
as the air, and is preparing to go forth as a lecturer, 
particularly in vindication of the rights of woman. 
Her course here has been very firm and independent, 
and she has caused no small uneasiness to the spirit 
of sectarianism in the institution. '^ 

The labors of Garrison in carrying his message 
from town to town of the Western Reserve were 
prodigious. Between August 17th, when he arrived 
at New Lyme, and September 11th, when he deliv- 
ered his last address at Cleveland, twenty-six days 
in all, he made between thirty-five and forty ad- 
dresses, each one of considerable length. He had 
been much exposed to chills, speaking several times 
in damp tents, and once at least being soaked by a 
cold rain-storm. The season was the malarious late 
summer and autumn ; and at Cleveland he was 
prostrated by a fever, apparently of typhoid natui-e. 
His devoted friend Henry C. Wright hurried to his 
1 Life, Vol. Ill, p. 203. 



TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR 271 

bedside as soon as lie heard of his illness. At Gar- 
rison's request he went to Buffalo to report for the 
Liberator the proceedings of the national convention 
of the Liberty party, in session in that city October 
20th and 21st, 1847. He brought back the news 
that John P. Hale, of Xew Hampshire, had been 
nominated for President of the United States, and 
then accompanied Garrison home. Garrison was 
confined to his bed for over a month, and his disease 
several times threatened to terminate fatally. After 
his return, Garrison suffered several relapses, and 
was unable to take any part in the work of the 
Liberator until the beginning of 1848. The paper 
was burdened with a greater deficit than ever, 
caused by an injudicious reduction in the price. 

Thus the year ended gloomily for Garrison. The 
state of his private affairs was apparently desperate, 
and the cause of abolition seemed to many to be 
retrograding. Yet, sustained only by his own 
faith, with the support of a few friends, he main- 
tained almost unabated cheerfulness, and absolutely 
undiminished courage and confidence. With the 
unshaken serenity of the convinced believer, he 
looked forward to the time when the slave power 
should bring about its own destruction. Garrison 
saw, as did a few others of his day, notably Gid- 
dings and Benton, that by the annexation of Texas 
the dam against an ti- slavery sentiment was only 
built higher for a time, and could perceive the slow 
rise of the sluggish waters, one day to be loosed in 
a torrent of irresistible fierceness and power. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE PERIOD OF COMPROMISE 

The faith which convinced Garrison that the an- 
nexation of Texas, though ostensibly a victory for 
the slave power, was yet driving slavery nearer de- 
struction, by bringing the free North into alignment 
against the extension of the system, also assured 
him that the war with Mexico was a stride toward 
the same goal. Many facts encouraged him. As 
the war advanced to its inevitable end, he thought 
he saw a reaction set in. The paralysis of the 
Northern conscience, the dumbing of the Northern 
voice, were coming to an end. The deadnoss of the 
border states, Virginia and Kentucky, was somewhat 
stirred for a moment ; Delaware was on the side of 
the free states in opposing the extension of slavery. 
The reluctance to return fugitive slaves was grow- 
ing ; insomuch that in 1849 Garrison affirmed, with 
his usual hopefulness, that probably no snirender 
of a slave, either by or against law, would again be 
permitted on the soil of New England, to say noth- 
ing of the other free states. 

The cycle of change through which Northern 
feeling toward slavery moved round from indiffer- 
ence, through distaste, dislike, and hostility, to ab- 
horrence took the practical form of a political 
movement under the Constitution, to confine 
slavery within its existing limits. The leaders of 



THE PERIOD OF COMPROMISE 273 

this movemenl, from Leicester Kiug to Abraham 
LincolD, i^romised the South its due as a party to 
the contract of union, pledged themselves to keep 
hands off slavery where it was by state law estab- 
lished, but would have invoked the flaming sword 
to protect from the sin every foot of American soil 
not yet cursed by it. Garrison's views, as he 
watched the restlessness of the I^orth between 1848 
and 1850, suffered no change. As for the Wilmot 
Proviso, which forbade the institution of slavery to 
be planted in any of the territory acquired from 
Mexico by the war, he looked on it with interest as 
a hopeful symptom and gave it his support ; but he 
was on the whole indifferent to its passage, '^ feeling 
that the attempt to restrict slavery by laws ... is 
precisely equivalent to damming up the Mississippi 
with bulrushes." He had exactly the same judg- 
ment of the Free-Soil party, which swallowed the 
perishing Liberty party in this year (1848), Hale 
withdrawing in favor of Martin Van Buren, the 
Free-Soil nominee. This organization differed from 
its predecessor in two respects. First, the Free- 
Soil party consisted in the main of those who had 
left one or the other of the old parties, and indi- 
cated a growing opposition to slavery, while the 
Liberty party was composed of Abolitionists, and 
in Garrison's view represented a degeneracy in true 
anti-slavery feeling. Secondly, the platform of the 
Free-Soil party abandoned the position of some of 
the earlier leaders that the Constitution was op- 
posed to slavery, and pledged itself to abolition 
only where it was constitutionally possible. Garri- 



274 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

son welcomed the creation of the new party, and 
felt toward its members none of the bitterness with 
which he had condemned the Liberty i)arty. Yet, 
of course, its platform was regarded by him as mor- 
ally defective. The ''disunion ground" of the 
Abolitionists seemed to him ''invulnerable," and 
lie believed that at length all Northern parties must 
come to it. At the same time he felt great concern 
lest faithful Abolitionists should be enticed into 
voting with the Free -Soil party and for Martin 
Van Buren of all men ; he therefore strove to keep 
before their eyes the "true issue," and euforced 
upon them their duty to j^rotest by withdrawal 
against the unclean bargain of the Constitution. 

The years of this rising tide of Free-Soil senti- 
ment were years in which Garrison's activity was 
much impeded by illness. On account of the recur- 
rence of the fever by which he had been attacked on 
his western journey, he went in July, 1848, to 
a water-cure at Northampton, Mass., where his 
brother-in-law had lived as a member of the com- 
munity earlier visited by Garrison and no longer 
in existence, and where he still made his residence. 
The water-cure was owned and managed by a 
"Dr." Ruggles, a colored man of force and capac- 
ity, who had long before invited Garrison to come 
to Northampton for ti*eatment. Garrison, who tried 
many medical experiments, had a fancy for hydro- 
pathy, but had never before given himself up to the 
severe regimen of a water-cure. The country bored 
him. He missed liveliness and bustle, and the 
sense of being busy for tlie good of mankind. He 



i:he period of compromise 276 

found the men at the cure companionable, but the 
women ''remarkably silent, and most of them not 
very interestiDg" ; and on the whole he endured 
the irksome sanitarium life with little patience. 

In the circle of his own family he met this year 
anew the mysteries of birth and death. On April 
18, 1848, he lost his little daughter Elizabeth, the 
first of his children of whom he was bereft ; and on 
October 28th, he was rejoiced by the birth of his 
son, Francis Jackson, the younger of the two biog- 
raphers. Bereavement in itself Garrison bore with 
calm fortitude. Death to him was not fearful, but 
as natural and inevitable as life, and like life to be 
gravely accepted. But in 1849 the death of another 
of his children occurred under circumstances so 
shocking and painful as to leave a wound forever in 
the hearts of Garrison and his wife. This son, 
named after Professor Charles FoUen, the story 
of whose bold and useful life and tragic death has 
been narrated in previous pages, was a child of 
seven. In a letter of tender pathos Garrison tells 
of his dead son's physical beauty and energy, his 
high promise, and his rarely affectionate nature. 
He had canght cold while the Garrisons were mov- 
ing during the inclement month of March from their 
house on Pine Street to "No. 65 Suffolk Street, now 
Sliawmut Avenue. The cold developed into brain 
fever ; the parents, not realizing the dangerous na- 
ture of the disease, tried to overcome it with domes- 
tic treatment ; and the child was fatally scalded in 
a defective steam bath. Such an accident added to 
the sorrow of the father and mother the uuavoid- 



276 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKRISON 

able feeliug that they were responsible for their 
boy's death. 

Upon the brief i^eriod of unrest, promising a wider 
political acceptance of Free-Soil ideas, followed the 
Compromise of 1850. The Compromise was, of 
course, a hollow bargain for the N^orth, which re- 
ceived nothing but the abolition of the slave-trade 
in the District of Columbia, while slavery itself was 
still maintained there. The admission of California 
as a free state was something beyond the control of 
parties, and could not properly be reckoned as an 
element in the Compromise. The South, on the 
other hand, got the refusal to enact the Wilmot 
Proviso, the indemnity to Texas for relinquishing 
her claims in New Mexico, and above all the Fugi 
tive Slave Law. Here, as Garrison insisted, was 
the real point of the Compromise. By this law, the 
North, with sad conscientiousness, pledged all its 
force to the fulfilment of the compact to protect 
Southern economic institutions. It was the logical 
result of that compact, of the attempt to weld two in- 
compatible civilizations — if one of them ever was or 
yet is a civilization in the usually accepted sense — to 
join together by formalities what God by the nature 
of things had forever put asunder. That the older 
school of Unionist politicians, and especially Web- 
ster, should support the Compromise, was but nat- 
ural, in spite of occasional utterances in favor of the 
Wilmot Proviso, or against further yielding to the 
South. The whole meaning of their political life 
had been nothing less than the creation of the 
Union. They had warmed in the North a flame 



THE PERIOD OF COMPROMISE 277 

of patriotic devotiou to the country transcending 
loyalty to the state ; they had given all their 
strength to opposing sectionalism and encouraging 
nationalism, and they would have gone counter to 
the whole tenor of their careers had they imperiled 
that love of the Union now so fair and strong, but 
which they had known to be so frail in its earlier 
years. To Garrison, of course, as to AMiittier, 
Lowell, and Emerson, Webster's speech of the 7th 
of March was not only ^'indescribably base and 
wicked," but was an abandonment of an earlier 
and a purer faith. The connection of Whittier's 
poem ''Ichabod" with the politics of the time is 
familiar ; but some readers will remember that 
Longfellow's ''Ode to the Union" was also pub- 
lished at this time. Garrison contrasted with the 
poet's idea of the Union, — 

"Thou too, Bail on, O Ship of State ! "— 
his own conception of it as a 

" ' perfidious bark 
Built i' th' eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,' 

rotting through all her timbers, leaking from stem 
to stern, laboring heavily on a storm- tossed sea, 
surrounded by clouds of disastrous portent, navi- 
gated by those whose object is a piratical one 
(namely the extension and perpetuity of slavery) 
and destined to go down ' full many a fathom 
deep ' to the joy and exultation of all who are 
yearning for the deliverance of a groaning world." ^ 
1 Life, Vol. Ill, p. 280. 



278 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

Longfellow's words expressed something higher 
than mere material satisfaction with the Compro- 
mise J but to the American public at large, the 
Compromise was welcome because it seemed to 
bring external peace. The Union was confirmed, 
the sections were harmonious, the country was 
prospering as never before. Any action tending 
to break the calm was sure to be uufavoiably re- 
ceived. Indeed, there was much to convince the 
observer that the reaction against slavery had 
spent its force; for example, the new ''black" 
laws passed between 1849 and 1853 in the free 
states of Indiana, Iowa, Illinois, and Oregon, by 
which free blacks were forbidden under severe 
penalties to enter these states with the intention of 
residing, and were refused the equal protection of 
the law and subjected to vexations, sometimes 
petty, sometimes grave. 

It is no wonder that the calling of the annual 
meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society early 
in May, 1850, was the signal for mob violence. 
James Gordon Bennett asked in the New York Her- 
ald^ ''What business have all the religious lunatics 
in the free states to gather in this commercial cily 
for purposes which, if carried into effect, would ruin 
and destroy its prosperity?" and urged the "men 
of sense" not to "allow meetings to be held in the 
city which are calculated to make our country the 
arena of blood and murder, and render our city an 
object of horror to the whole South." The Herald 
urged that "when free discussion does not promote 
the public good, it has no more right to exist than 



THE PERIOD OF COMPEOMISE 279 

a bad government that is dangerous and oppressive 
to the common weal. It should be overthrown.'' 
"Never," says the same paper, "was there more 
malevolence and unblushing wickedness avowed 
than by this same Garrison. ... In Boston, a 
few months ago, a convention was held, the object 
of which was the overthrow of Sunday worship. 
Thus it ai^pears that nothing divine or secular is 
respected by these fanatics." In its list of the 
speakers, the Herald repeated the old myth that 
Garrison was a mulatto, and strove to excite race 
prejudice directly and personally against him and 
others. The language of the Xew York Globe was 
even bolder: "If this Douglass [Frederick Doug- 
lass] shall reproclaim his Syracuse treason here, 
and any man shall arrest his diabolical career, and 
not injure him, thousands will exclaim, in language 
of patriotic love for the Constitution and the rights 
of the South, ^ Did he not strike the villain dead ?' " 
Garrison was bold and serene, but quite aware of 
his danger. He wrote to his wife, his confidence in 
her strength and courage causing him perhaps to 
speak too freely. "In the course of another hour 
I shall be on my way to our meeting, . . . 
'bound in the spirit' as Paul said of old, 'not 
knowing the things that shall befall me there,' 
saving that ' bonds and afflictions abide with me in 
every city,' though 'none of these things move me, 
neither count I my life dear unto me ' in compari- 
son with the sacred cause to which I have been so 
long consecrated. That our meeting will be a 
stormy one, I have little doubt — perhaps brutal and 



280 WILLIxVM LLOYD GAERISON 

riotous iu the extreme ; — for Benuett, in each num- 
ber of bis inftimous Herald^ for a week, lias been 
publisliiug the most atrocious articles respecting us, 
avowedly to have us put down by mobocratic vio- 
lence ; and it will be strauge indeed if, with his al- 
most omnipotent influence over all the mobocratic 
elements in this city, we are permitted to meet with- 
out imminent personal peril. Bennett has aimed to 
hold me up as a si)ecial object of vengeance ; and 
thus I am doomed to go, under circumstances of 
peculiar trial and danger. It is evident that as 
long as our meetings are held, he is determined to 
set the mob upon us ; with what temporary success 
will soon appear. As to the final result of all this, 
there can be no doubt. It is the prerogative of the 
God whom we serve to cause the wrath of man to 
praise Him, and the remainder of wrath to restrain. 

'■ '■ Here I must pause. We are all in the hands 
of a good Father, for time and eternity."^ And 
this man was an ''infidel" ! 

The meeting was held on the morning of May 7, 
1850, in the ''Tabernacle," a Congregational place 
of worship, situated on the northwest corner of 
Broadway and Anthony (now Worth) Street, the 
auditorium of which was a large square hall 
with a floor sloping down to the platform. Tiers 
of seats from behind the platform were carried 
around the sides to join the gallery. The leader- 
ship of the disorderly crowd gathered to break up 
the meeting was assumed by a certain Isaiah 
Rynders, a bully-rook and meeting-breaker of wide 
^Life, Vol. Ill, p. 285 



THE PEKIOD OF COMPROMISE 281 

experience, who had been a boatman on the Hudson 
and a gambler in the Southwest, a man accustomed 
to violence, and bold and self-assertive in the midst 
of physical danger, a Tammany ''district boss,'' 
and captain of a political rowdy organization, the 
''Empire Club." The burly fellow, of the sort we 
now understand better than we used to, had posted 
himself at one side of the organ -loft behind the 
platform, where he could command the battle-field 
with the sweep of his eye. His followers were about 
him, ready to surge down on the platform when the 
time should come. 

Garrison dressed himself with scrupulous care. 
In order to avoid the least appearance of singularity, 
he even changed the turn-down collar he had been 
in the habit of wearing through all the moods of 
fashion, for a stand-up collar, such as was customary 
at the time. He opened the meeting with reading 
from the Scriptures, and began his address without 
interruption. His topic was the inevitable one, the 
inconsistency between the profession and the prac- 
tice of the Christian churches of the country. He 
spoke as usual with force and even with violence, 
but with diguit}^ Intending to take up for con- 
sideration each great religious denomination, he 
began with the Eoman Catholic Church. Captain 
Ryiiders interrupted him to ask whether there were 
no other churches beside the Catholic the members 
of which held slaves. Garrison answered his ques- 
tion by proceeding in his review of the denomina- 
tions, and concluded with the intentionally startling 
declaration, "A belief in Jesus is no evidence of 



282 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

goodness." After some little disturbauce, he as- 
serted that if slaves worshiped Jesus, they did not 
worship a ** slaveholding and a slave-breeding 
Jesus" ; — that now the old Pharisees were dead, 
Jesus had become respectable, and sat in the Pres- 
ident's chair. ''Zachary Taylor sits there, and he 
believes in Jesus. He believes in war, and the 
Jesus that ^gave the Mexicans hell ! ' " 

When Garrison referred to President Taylor, 
Rynders, followed by a yelling crowd, rushed down 
on the platform, with menacing gestures, and 
bellowed : ' ' I will not allow you to insult the 
President of the United States. You shan't do it." 

The behavior of Garrison and his associates on 
the platform was cool and composed. Garrison 
told Rynders that he had not spoken disrespectfully 
of President Taylor ; that he had only quoted some 
of the President's own recent words. In quiet tones 
he added that Rynders ought not to interrupt, — 
that he might speak himself if he would, and that 
Garrison would keep order. The confusion con- 
tinued. A young Malchus, the son of federal 
Judge Kane of Philadelphia, rushed to protect his 
beloved townsman, the Unitarian minister, Rev. Dr. 
William H. Furncss. '' They shall not touch a hair 
of your head," he uttered in a tone suffused with 
wrath, and shook his fist in Rynders's face. *' If he 
touches Mr. Garrison, I'll kill him ! " 

The floor was formally offered to Rynders, who 
was invited to a seat on the platform. This he de- 
clined ; but having some sense of fair play, stood 
to one side with folded arms, glooming, until Gar- 



THE PEKIOD OP OOMPEOMISE 283 

rison had finished his speech and had offered his 
resolutions condemnatory of current religion. 
When Garrison resumed his place, the floor was 
again offered to Eynders, who preferred to have his 
spokesman follow Dr. Furness. This clergyman, 
famous for his beautiful elocution, made a winning 
and powerful plea for freedom of speech, which, 
though it provoked Eynders to interruption, at last 
drew applause even from him. The speech saved 
the meeting from destruction. Captain Eynders' s 
speaker was then i3ut forward. He was recognized 
by Garrison as a former pressman on the Liberatorj 
and is described in the biography by Garrison's 
sons as a ^'Professor Grant, a seedy-looking per- 
sonage, having one hand tied round with a dirty 
cotton cloth." His speech, on the thesis that 
negroes are not men but a kind of monkeys, pro- 
voked the jeers of the mercurial crowd of Eynders's 
followers, whom Garrison tried to keep in order. 
When ''Professor" Grant had finished, Frederick 
Douglass came forward, and asked the obvious 
question, ' ' Am I a man ? ' ' As the audience roared 
its answer, Eynders sneered, "You are not a black 
man ; you are ouly half a nigger." 

"Then," responded Douglass, with the blandest 
of smiles and bows, " I am your half-brother." 
When in the course of his address, Douglass criti- 
cized Horace Greeley, Eynders, as Greeley's polit- 
ical opponent, concurred. "I am happy," said 
Douglass, "to have the assent of my half-brother 
here;" and throughout his speech, he continued 
with the genial impertinence of the practiced 



284 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

speaker, who knows how to divert an audience at 
the expense of an adversary, without giving the 
adversary any handle to take hold of. Finally he 
said, * ' We were born here, we are not dying out, 
and we mean to stay here. We made the clothes 
you have on, the sugar you put into your tea. We 
would do more for you if allowed." 

''Yes, you would cut our throats for us!" in 
allusion to an injudicious assertion of George 
Thomi^son, that slaves would be justified in cutting 
their masters' throats, which was assumed to be the 
accepted doctrine of Abolitionists. 

" No, but we would cut your hair for you." 

Douglass's speech led to the dramatic culmina- 
tion of the meeting. He called for the Kev. S. S. 
Ward, the editor of the Impartial Citizen. From the 
back of the platform came forward "a large man, 
so black that as Wendell Phillips said, when he 
shut his eyes you could not see him." 

"Well," said Eynders, "this is the original 
nigger ! " 

"I have often heard of the magnanimity of 
Captain Eynders," replied Ward, "but the half 
has never been told me." His speech was in so 
noble a strain that the very mob applauded him, 
and the meeting for the day ended with a triumph 
not only for the Anti-Slavery Society, but for the 
negro race, "two members of which," says Dr. 
Furness, "whose claims to be human had been 
denied, had by mere force of intellect overwhelmed 
their maligners with confusion." 

la the evening the speeches were broken up by 



THE PERIOD OF COMPROMISE 285 

noises ; and on the following day, Rynders and his 
men, having learned that intellectual weapons cut 
their fingers, confined themselves to physical dis- 
turbances. The eccentric Burleigh was derided. 
Rynders put his arm round Burleigh's neck and 
affectionately stroked his long sandy beard. Phil- 
lips was made the target for filthy personal abuse, 
and at last the rabble put forward a representative 
to propose resolutions against abolition. Rynders 
declared them carried by acclamation. The police 
did nothing to arrest the disturbance. Finally, un- 
der protest, Garrison was obliged to declare the 
meeting closed, the i^roprietors of the building re- 
fusing to allow it to be longer used by the society. 
Their ground was fear of damage, and especially 
tlie imminent danger to the Xew York Society Li- 
brary, familiarly known as the ^'City," or ^'Public" 
Library, where a little further up Broadway were 
held the meetings of the evening of May 7th, and of 
the following morning. 

That the triumph of violence was rather over 
freedom of speech than over Abolitionism was gen- 
erally recoginzcd throughout the Xorth. Efforts 
were made to excite a mob in Boston, but though 
the meeting was harassed and disturbed, it was not 
broken up. Indeed, of those who took part in the 
disturbances both in New York and in Boston, it 
may be said, as of most anti-abolition mobs, that 
reprehensibly as they behaved, they were not blood- 
thirsty or even greatly bent on violence. They 
were mainly rom posed of ignorant and foolish rather 
than ill-disposed persons, actuated by a pleasure in 



286 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISOK 

mischief and a desire for vulgar sport, not com- 
mooly by dark designs and a settled hatred of 
Abolitionism. Bad as they were, their course bears 
testimony to the general mildness of the Northern 
temper. 

It might have been expected that equal violence 
on the other side would have been manifested in 
opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law. That law 
abrogated the fundamental guarantees of personal 
liberty so deeply written in Anglo-American juris- 
prudence. Annulling the writ of habeas cor^pus ; 
giving the person whose status was in question no 
right to testify ; in eifect laying on him the burden 
of proof ; awarding the oilicers who remanded the 
unfortunate to slavery twice the fees allowed in 
case the decision went in his favor : it was at once a 
testimony to the weakness of the system which it 
was designed to support, and to the enormous force 
of the pro-slavery bargain in controlling the North. 
A cry of horror went up from hundreds of anti- 
slavery meetings, and even the less extreme Aboli- 
tionists and many who were not Abolitionists defied 
the law, and proclaimed their intention of refusing 
to yield obedience to it. Four of the incidents con- 
nected with the enforcement of the law, — the slay- 
ing of Gorsuch at Christiana, Pa., by the negroes 
he claimed, the rescue of Jerry McHenry at Syra- 
cuse, the rescue of Shadrach at Boston by a mob 
of his own race, and the remanding to slavery from 
Boston of Thomas Simms, — all struck the public 
attention. Far more justly may the student reflect 
upon the many quiet and unopposed, apparently 



THE PEEIOD OF COMPROMISE 287 

unnoticed, instances of enforcement of the law, often 
on flimsy evidence and under cruel circumstances. 
Was not Judge Taney merely recognizing facts 
when he implied that the traditional American view 
of the negro was that he had no rights which a 
white man is bound to resi)ect? In spite of the 
shocking nature of the law, the majority in the 
Korth remained silent. The temper of the day is 
shown by the fact that in 1851 the American Anti- 
Slavery Society could obtain no hall in New York, 
and was driven to Syracuse for its annual meeting. 

In 1851 the inlirm condition of Garrison's health 
drove him often from his desk. Yet despite grounds 
for discouragement and his own physical weakness, 
the year, though marked by little obvious progress 
for the cause, was one of much delight for him. 
George Thompson made a visit of eight months to 
the United States, and Garrison had great pleasure 
in his company. The twentieth anniversary of the 
establishment of the Liberator took place in this 
year, and was celebrated in a manner to touch Gar- 
rison's heart and to encourage him for the future. 

Some of the objects of his activity during this 
period seem obscure and unworthy. He strove 
strenuously but futilely to induce two foreigners 
visiting the United States, each on a special mis- 
sion, to declare themselves against slavery. In 1849 
Father Theobald Matliew, the Irish temperance ad- 
vocate, visited America. Father Mathew had al- 
ready given evidence of anti-slavery sentiments, 
having with O'Connell and seventy thousand other 
Irishmen signed an address to their countrymen in 



288 WILLIAM LLOYD GAIiKISON 

the United States, urging them to oppose slavery. 
But the Irish at that time iu this country were in 
the main unskilled day-laborers, competiug directly 
with negroes, and like the "poor whites" in the 
South, jealous of their own social and racial posi- 
tion above the slaves. Accordingly, when Father 
Mathew arrived in America, he regarded an exi^res- 
sion of opinion on the subject of slavery as likely to 
interfere with the chief object of his visit. He was 
obviously embarrassed by his signature to the ad- 
dress, and though he could not deny it, would not 
expressly avow^ it. The course followed by Father 
Mathew provoked a lively newspaper discussion on 
both sides of the Atlantic, and to a debate in the 
Senate of the United States upon a resolution to in- 
vite him to a seat on the floor of the Senate cham- 
ber. Garrison wrote five letters to Father Mathew, 
the ''false priest" as the Garrisons call him,^ af- 
firming that his conduct would be likeh^ to encour- 
age violence against the Abolitionists, and holding 
him responsible ''for leading his countrymen as- 
tray, and for adding to the anguish and despair of 
the slave." 

In 1852 Garrison made the same attempt with 
Louis Kossuth, the brilliant Hungarian who visited 
America to obtain, if possible, diplomatic recogni- 
tion or some governmental action in favor of his 
people, or, at least, money for their cause. The ro- 
mantic history of Hungary and Kossuth's marvel- 
ous eloquence would have attracted the attention of 
Americans at any time, but when there was no po- 

^Life, Vol. Ill, p. 259. 



THE PEKIOD OF COMPEOMISE 289 

litical question to eugross tlieir mindfci, he created 
au excitement api)ioacbing ecstasy. Garrison re- 
garded the idea of visiting slave-cursed America in 
order to free Hungary from mere political domi- 
nance as a shocking anomaly, and called upon Kos- 
suth to declare his sentiments on the subject of 
slavery as a possible aud worthy contribution to the 
cause of liberty, one the world over. With diplo- 
matic skill, the Hungarian, like the Irishman, re- 
fused to commit himself on the subject, as ulterior 
to his purpose and function ; Garrison in vain called 
on him to be ''faithful and fearless," and censured 
liim bitterly. 

But the really important event of the year 1852 
was the appearance of Uncle Todi's CabiUj which 
was ijublished in March. Within a year, three 
hundred thousand copies were sold in America, 
and a million and a half in Europe. In spite of 
crudity, it rapt and mastered its readers by the 
force of genius displayed in it, and inculcated its 
doctrine with an effectiveness such as has been 
X)0ssessed by no other work of the imagination with 
a purpose except the one with which it is inevitably 
comjiared, namely, Eousseau's Nouvelle Helo'ise. 
Not intended as a fair picture of average slavery, it 
was a just account of the possibilities of horror and 
cruelty in the system, and stirred the pulse and 
moved the heart of the whole civilized world. 
Garrison testified to the power of the book, and 
welcomed its influence. He commented character- 
istically on "Uncle Tom" as an example of Chris- 
tian non-resistance, wondering whether Mrs. Stowe 



290 WILLIAJVI LLOYD GARRISON 

would set the same standard for a white man. No 
immediate effect of JJjicle Tom^s Cabin upon aboli- 
tion societies and Free Soil votes was perceived, 
and hence the practical influence of the book has 
been belittled ; but as a living body of ideas, slowly 
working to modify the sentiments of the future, its 
power is beyond calculation. The most penetratiug 
criticism thus far made is that Uncle Tom was a 
white man with a black skin. 

The latter part of 1852 and the whole of 1853 
were given up by Garrison to an almost uninter- 
rupted round of conventions, both of Abolitionists 
and of the supporters of the multitude of other re- 
forms espoused by him. In April, 1853, he for the 
first time visited Cincinnati, the centre of a settle- 
ment largely from New England, though not mainly 
so, as was that of the Western Reserve. This time 
he made the journey all the way by rail. The appli- 
cation of the electric telegraph to train-despatching 
had made possible the administration of large 
systems with through trains ; and four railroads, the 
New York Central, the Erie, the Pennsylvania, and 
the Baltimore and Ohio now provided east and west 
lines from the Atlantic seaboard to the northern 
states of the Mississippi Valley. The north and 
south transportation line of the Mississippi River 
was diminished in importance, and the rapid immi- 
gration made possible by the railroads created the 
combined North and Northwest which in time shut 
in and overcame the South in the great struggle of 
the sections. Some details of Garrison's journey are 
not without interest. He reached the east bank of 



THE PERIOD OF COMPROMISE 29l 

the Hudson late at night. There were no good ac- 
commodations on this bank, and he was afraid of 
losing his train out of Albany if he stayed where 
he was till morning ; so he was under the necessity 
of crossing the river in a small boat. He com- 
plained of the inconvenience, and of the exorbitant 
charge of five York shillings, sixty-two and a half 
cents, which he had to pay. He left Boston Friday 
afternoon and reached Cincinnati Monday evening. 
The journey had occupied him for more than three 
full days, including two sleepless nights ; if he had 
traveled continuously, it would have occupied 
about two days. 

In Cincinnati, on the banks of the Ohio River, he 
looked across from the free soil of Ohio to slave- 
ridden Kentucky, his thoughts on the heroic but 
injudicious Cassius M. Clay, publishing his little 
abolition paper from behind the walls within which 
he was in a state of peri^etual siege. Clay while a 
student at Yale had been converted by Garrison, 
and was striving to reform his native state from 
within. He sent a message to the meeting at 
Cincinnati, hailing Garrison as ''the first of living 
men.'^ It is noteworthy that Garrison's resolutions 
on this occasion emphasize rather the economic 
than the moral evils of slavery, and prophesy the 
''New South." 

Driven back to Boston by an attack of pleurisy, 
he spoke as usual at the May meeting of the 
American Anti- Slavery Society in Xew York, 
where there was no interruption or disturbance. 
He rejoiced in the successful oi)position to the 



292 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISOK 

Fugitive Slave Law, and iu the appearance of Uncle 
Tom^s Cabin. Henry Ward Beecher, who followed 
him, spoke for the first time from an abolition 
platform, though not quite as a Garrisonian Aboli- 
tionist. After a busy summer, Garrison took an- 
other western journey in October, intending particu- 
larly to visit Michigan. On the way, at Cleveland, 
he spoke at a Woman's Eights Convention, where 
the younger brother of a clergyman, of whom he 
had spoken severely, committed the undignified 
violence of i^ulling his nose. 

In Michigan, as in Ohio before, Stei)hen S. Foster, 
and his wife, Abby Kelley Foster, had been already 
prei)aring the way as evangelists. They thought 
the political anti-slavery f)arty now very weak and 
the time propitious for Garrisonianism. On the 
whole, Garrison found political an ti -slavery still in 
the ascendent. In Detroit he could not get a place 
in which to speak, and jiassed his hours of enforced 
idleness in a visit to Windsor, Canada, where were 
many colored refugees. The only tangible re suit of 
the journey was the foundation of a Michigan Anti- 
Slavery Society at Adrian. Finall}^, Garrison 
rounded out this year, which had been crowded 
full of meetings, with a celebration of the twentieth 
anniversary of the establishment of the American 
Anti-Slavery Society, at Philadelphia. 

Restlessly active as were the years from the Mex- 
ican War to the passage of the Nebraska Bill, they 
were more notable for the advance in Garrison's 
religious views than for his anti-slavery propaganda. 
When the Chardon Street Convention was held in 



THE PERIOD OF COMPROMISE 293 

1840, Garrison already adhered to many heterodox 
opinions ; yet he was far from being radically un- 
evangelical. He still believed in the inspiration 
of the Bible, in the divinity of Jesus, and in the 
related doctrine of the Atonement. But with the 
course of time his orthodox theological views on 
these matters suffered steady disintegration. Even 
his anti-sabbatarianism increased in strength, so 
that late in 1847 he wrote and circulated a call for 
a convention, not this time to discuss the obligation 
of observiug Sunday, but to oppose the laws punish- 
ing Sabbath- breaking, — to shake off ''the sabbat- 
ical yoke " which lay " so heavily on the necks of 
the American people.'' The fundamental ground 
of the call was, that to establish by law any day of 
the week as sacred to religious observances, and to 
punish those who engaged in their ordinary voca- 
tions on that day, was to interfere with liberty of 
conscience. The call also declared that the Scrip- 
tures gave no warrant for compelling the observance 
of any day of the week as the Sabbath. The im- 
mediate object of assembling the convention was to 
oppose a society — the American and Foreign Sabbath 
Union, which was carrjaug on an aggressive cam- 
paign in favor of the sabbatical observance of Sun- 
day. This society employed a permanent secretary, 
who gave his whole time to the cause, traveling 
thousands of miles, making addresses before all 
kinds of public assemblies, and distributing tracts 
throughout the country. 

Against this society Garrison and his fellow 
signers charged that it was animated by ''the spirit 



294 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKEISON 

of religious bigotry and ecclesiastical tyranny — the 
spirit which banished the Baj^tists from Massa- 
chusetts, and subjected the Quakers to imprison- 
ment and death, in the early history of this country." 
The call sums up the grounds for assembling the 
convention by expressing the belief that *'the 
efforts of this ' Sabbath Union ' ought to be baffled 
by at least a corresponding energy on the parts of 
the friends of civil and religious liberty. . . . 
That the Sabbath as now recognized and enforced 
is one of the main pillars of Priestcraft and Super- 
stition, and the stronghold of a merely ceremonial 
religion ; that, in the hands of a sabbatizing clergy, 
it is a mighty obstacle in the way of all the reforms 
of the age, — such as Anti-Slavery, Peace, Temper- 
ance, Purity, Human Brotherhood, etc., etc., — and 
rendered adamantine in its aspect toward bleeding 
Humanity, whose cause must not be i:>leaded but 
whose cries must be stifled on its ' sacred ' occur- 
rence. . . ." * 

The document gives some little consideration 
to the social and economic aspect of the Sabbath 
question, — one of the exceedingly few instances in 
which Garrison even by the most indirect implica- 
tion refers to the lot of the laboring man. Here as 
usual he insists that liberation from sin would des- 
troy want and affliction, and bring grinding toil 
to an end. '' We have no objection either to the 
first or the seventh day of the week as a day of rest 
from bodily toil, both for man and beast. On the 
contrary, such rest is not only desirable but in- 
» Life, Vol. Ill, p. 224. 



THE PERIOD OP COMPROMISE 295 

dispensable. Neither man nor beast can long 
endure unmitigated labor. But we do not believe 
that it is in harmony with the will of God, or the 
physical nature of man, that mankiod should be 
doomed to hard and wasting toil six days out of 
seven to obtain a bare subsistence. Reduced to 
such a pitiable condition, the rest of one day in the 
week is indeed grateful, and must be regarded as a 
blessing ; but it is totally inadequate wholly to 
repair the physical injury or the moral degradation 
consequent on such protracted labor. It is not in 
accordance with the law of life that our race should 
be thus worked, and only thus partially relieved 
from sufferiug and a premature death. They need 
more, and must have more, instead of less rest ; 
and it is only for them to be enlightened and re- 
claimed — to put away those things which now cause 
them to grind in the prison-house of Toil, namely, 
idolatry, priestcraft, sectarism, slavery, war, in- 
temperance, licentiousness, monopoly, and the like 
— in short to live in peace, obey the eternal law of 
being, strive for each other's welfare, and ^glorify 
God in their bodies and spirits which are his' — 
and they will secure the rest, not only of one day in 
seven, but of a very large portion of their earthly 
existence. To them shall be granted the mastery 
over every day and every hour of time, as against 
want and affliction ; for the earth shall be filled with 
abundance for all." ^ 

The convention met March 23 and 24, 1848. The 
circular calling it was signed altogether by Aboli- 
1 Life, Vol. Ill, pp. 224, 225. 



296 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

tionists, aud chiefly by Abolitionists of the extreme 
wiug ; and the most notable speakers were Garrison 
himself and his close associates. The orthodox 
Boston Becorder says of the meeting : "The most 
influential speaker . . . was the redoubtable 
Garrison himself. At every turn of the business, 
his hand grasped the steering-oar ; and let his 
galley-slaves row with what intent they would, he 
guided all things at his will." This anti -Sabbath 
convention now caused him to be named the " Prince 
of New England infidelity." 

Garrison's repugnance to the idea of ceremonial 
holiness was not limited to hallowed days, but ex- 
tended to a consecrated clergy and a sacred ecclesi- 
astical organization. He had come to abhor a cler- 
ical order, and scorned the conception that any 
church can be the one Church of Christ ; and this 
same year, 1848, he proclaimed his views in an 
editorial in the Liberator. " Eepresenting no society 
or body of people on earth, speaking only my own 
sentiments, on my own responsibility, on the plat- 
form of free expression, not of technical anti- 
slavery," he wrote, "I am free to avow my opposi- 
tion to the clergy, not because in the mass, or in 
general, they are found in league with popular 
wickedness, resisting every righteous reform by 
every means within their power, but as an order, 
claiming divine sanction and authority. My ob- 
jections are not to the 'abuses' of the order. It 
has no abuses ; any more than rum-di-inking or 
slaveholding. It is, in itself, an abuse — or rather, 
it is the source of abuses. ... It is the sworn 



THE PERIOD OF COMPROMISE 297 

foe of Progress, a mountainous obstacle in the path- 
way of Hu inanity. It was unknown to primitive 
Christianity ; it derives no authority from the 
gospel. It is to the Church what a self- constituted 
nobility is to the state. Like the poison-tree, it 
must be exterminated, root and branch. For as 
strong reasons, I seek the extirpation of every 
church, which, by virtue of its organization, claims 
to be divinely instituted the Church of Christ, or a 
branch of that Church, and therefore makes the 
evidence of true religion to consist in joining it, or 
acknowledging the validity of its claims. . . . 
The Church of Christ is not mutable but permanent, 
and therefore not a formal organization. No one 
can be voted into it, no one expelled from it, by 
human suffrages." ^ 

His belief in the plenary inspiration of the Bible 
had also been gradually undermined. The *' mem- 
orable conversations," in the halls and lobbies of 
the Chardon Street Convention, to which Emerson 
refers, may have had to do with this change of 
faith ; but as early as 1843, Edmund Quincy noted 
the alteration in Garrison's views, rejoicing for him 
as a man, but lamenting for the cause as an Aboli- 
tionist. *'It was so convenient to be able to reply 
to those who were calling him infidel, that he be- 
lieved as much as anybody, and swallowed the 
whole Bible in a lump, from Genesis to Revelation, 
both included. They say that in Connecticut they 
always keep one member of a pious family uncon- 
verted to do their wicked work for them. I sup- 
1 Liberator, Nov. 10, 1848. 



298 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

pose my policy is something of the same sort." i 
Garrison's denial of the inspiration of the Bible was 
most conspicuously expressed at a convention as- 
sembled at Hartford, Conn., in June, 1853, to dis- 
cuss the ''origin, authority, and influence of the 
Jewish and Christian Scriptures." At the conven- 
tion, the mere calliug of which was naturally re- 
garded as blasphemous, a disorderly crowd in the 
galleries, largel^^ theological students from Trinity 
College, disturbed the i)roceedings with unseemly 
noises ; and when the attempt was finallj^ made to 
restore order by arresting some of the rioters, knives 
were drawn, sword-canes flourished, and it seemed 
likely that blood would be shed. Garrison declared 
that the American clergy as a body would ' ' burn 
the Bible to-morrow, if persecution should be the 
result of disobedience. ' ' 

In one of his speeches at Hartford, Garrison 
asserted that he well knew the outcry of "Infidel ! 
Infidel! Infidel!" which would rise against him, 
and well understood that his presence would be con- 
strued as another evidence of the infidel character 
of the auti -slavery movement. "Shall I, therefore, 
be dumb? . . . Why, sir, no freedom of speech 
or inquiry is conceded to me in this laud. Am I 
not vehemently told both at the ^N'orth and the 
South that I have no right to meddle with the 
question of slavery? And my right to speak on 
any other subject, in opposition to public opinion, 
is equally denied to me." These words show how 
much more Garrison stood for the only really im- 
^Life, Vol. Ill, p. 96. 



THE PERIOD OF COMPROMISE 299 

portaut freedom, which carries all others with it, 
freedom of the miud and of speech, than merely for 
emancipation, however dear the latter was to his 
heart. 

His changing views as to the office and work of 
Jesus may be traced with some clearness from the 
record he has left, though it is not possible to tell 
exactly when he gave up the evangelical view. In 
January, 1841, he could write, ^' I glory in nothing 
here below save in Jesus and Him crucified." 
Walking home from Theodore Parker's sermon "On 
the Trausient and Permanent in Christianity," deliv- 
ered in May, 1841, he said to his companion, John- 
son, "Infidelity, Oliver, infidelity!" In 1842 he 
was shocked to see the name of Socrates placed beside 
that of Jesus. But by 1845 he took very calmly Par- 
ker's heresies, minimizing the imiDortance of the su- 
pernatural elements in Christianity, in comparison 
with the moral ones. ' * Surely, ' ' he says, ' ' the obli- 
gations and duties of man to his fellow man and his 
God are in no degree affected by the question, 
whether miracles were wrought in Judea or not, 
with whatever interest that question may be in- 
vested." The ordinances of Christianity were as 
little respected by him as the articles of belief. The 
Baptist Garrison had traveled a long way when he 
could say to his little daughter, who asked whether 
she had been baptized : " No, my darling, but you 
have had a good bath every morning, which is a 
great deal better." 

Garrison's course not only offended the great body 
of believers, but pained and grieved many who 



300 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

sympathized with his efforts to destroy slavery and 
who respected his personality. When some of his 
friends, American and English, disphiyed their un- 
easiness, he replied to them that in so far as they 
were persuaded that their ideas rested on a solid 
foundation, they courted investigation ; and that 
just in so far as their ideas rested on mere tradition, 
or as they felt themselves insecure in their belief, 
they feared it. His reply to Mrs. Stowe, who wrote 
to him with excellent temper upon the subject of 
his 'infidelity," evinces the point of view he 
had at last reached. After asserting that *' ven- 
eration for the Book " had done nothing for the 
''cause of bleeding humanity" he declared, "My 
reliance for the deliverance of the oppressed uni- 
versally is upon the nature of man, the inherent 
wrongfulness of oppression, the power of truth, and 
the omnipotence of God." The last phrase is note- 
worthy. ''God," as J. M. McKim said with 
reference to Garrison to a friend, "is in all his 
thoughts." However far he wandered from ortlio- 
doxy, his whole life was an act of devotion to God. 
He saw in the world the governance of a righteous 
spirit, a personal Deity, in whose presence lie 
walked habitually, and to whom he regarded his 
every act as related. 

Garrison evinced an enthusiasm quite as Ameri- 
can as Athenian for every new thing. The phe- 
nomena of Spiritualism, which were exciting Amer- 
ica in the decade from 1840 to 1850, engaged his at- 
tention. He looked at evidence offered without prej- 
udice, and on being challenged for his opinion on 



THE PEKIOD OF COMPROMISE 301 

the subject, expressed his conviction, in May, 1842, 
that although some cheats had been encountered, 
yet no theory of imposture or delusion had ade- 
quately explained the manifestations. He was 
staggered by the intellectual inferiority of the com- 
munications given. He was, however, greatly af- 
fected by a message of friendly import, purporting 
to come from his alienated friend, N. P. Rogers, 
who had died in 1846. In course of time, the re- 
ceipt of many such messages wrought in him the 
comfortable conviction that Rogers, reconciled, had 
become in a sense his guardian and familiar spirit. 
Though convinced that words from the departed 
may come to earth, that bells and tables and other 
bodies are lifted by superhuman agency, and even 
that spirit photographs are taken, he gave little at- 
tention to the subject. He was aware that much 
deceit attends '* spiritualistic phenomena," and re- 
ceived no sufficiently important message to warrant 
him in giving Spiritualism attention against the 
wishes of his wife, who disliked it. His belief, of 
course, was another count against him in the indict- 
ment of heterodoxy. 

He was interested in phrenology and clairvoy- 
ance, and devoted to experiments in medicine. 
He consulted a number of regular practitioners, 
(each had a different opinion as to his malady), 
as well as hydropathists, clairvoyants, and herb 
doctors, not giving credence, but in order to try all 
things. ^'It may do me good," he says of a new 
treatment ; ** it certainly will not, if I do not try it." 
Since one of the clairvoyauls beheld the trouble on 



302 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

the wrong side, Lis faith in them was not strong, 
although, he intimates, they agreed as well as the 
physicians. Homeopathic treatment was not vigor- 
ous enough for him. His greatest confidence was in 
the system of Samuel Thomson, which, combining 
steam baths and cayenne pepper, was sufficiently 
emphatic to suit his taste for decided effects in 
medical treatment. He was devoted to patent med- 
icines. *'You remember," Edmund Quincy wrote 
to E. W. Webb, "his puff of Dr. C 's Anti- 
Scrofulous Panacea, ... in which he said that 
he felt it * permeating the whole system in the most 
delightful manner.^ 'Permeating the system!' 
said [Dr. Harvey E.] Weston, with the malice of 
a regular practitioner ; ' why, it was the first 
time he had taken a glass of grog, and he didn't 
know how good it was ! ' " * 

It was the advertising testimonials, we are told 
by his sons, which led him to have such faith in 
each new x>anacea, and which his faith in human 
nature caused him to credit. Usually he left the 
medicine in his closet unopened, ''for a rainy 
day"; or if he opened the bottle, he generally took 
only a few doses, abandoning the experiment in case 
the medicine did not seem to produce an immediate 
beneficial effect. His method accordingly provided 
its own safeguard. It requires, however, a full 
measure of his own good humor to refrain from 
harsh judgments over this feebler side of a strong 
and sensible nature. Garrison's dabblings in self- 
cure and the taking of advertised nostrums had 
' Life, Vol. IV, p. 323. 



THE PEEIOD OF COMPKOMISE 303 

their amusing features, yet really deserve to be 
condemned as something worse than a mere foible. 

With equally naive enthusiasm he rejoiced in all 
kinds of labor-saving inventions, fitting his house- 
hold with every ''gimcrack" in the way of house- 
keeping machinery which his means would allow. 
In the same spirit he welcomed phonography to 
Boston in 1845. His sanguine temperament led 
him to hope in it for the beginning which would 
lead to a universal language. He had felt the need 
of such a language at international conventions, 
where he had been led to "testify against the exist- 
ing diversity of tongues among mankind, as un- 
natural, fraudulent, afflictive, insupportable." 
This is perhaps the quaintest manifestation of the 
unhistorical, anti-national, unimaginative temper 
necessary to generate the spirit of "universal 
reform." He might, with equal consistency, have 
introduced resolutions against the law of gravita- 
tion, as impeding the upward, angelic movement 
to which man is obviously entitled by virtue of his 
aspiring nature. A language, like a state of 
society, is slowly wrought by the painful struggle 
of the ages. At least, Garrison hoped, phonog- 
raphy would correct the monstrous absurdities of 
English spelling, and " enable the ignorant to be 
taught to read and write in an incredibly short space 
of time, — compressing the labor of months into 
weeks and of years into months." Naturally he 
never learned to use the "plain, simple, consistent, 
and infallibly sure" system, though for a time he 
added phonography to the reforms on which he 



304 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

lectured. The enormous importance to his cause of 
reuderiug the speaker iiidepeudeut of mobs t)y 
enabling him to reach the world through the papers 
escaped his insight at first, though he soon recog- 
nized it. 

In spite of his hopeful and unrelaxed activity, 
Garrison must have felt that little anti-slaverj^ 
progress had been made since 1845, and he did not 
understand the signs of the times when in 1854 the 
passage of the Nebraska Bill shook into sudden 
crystallization the overcharged waters of Northern 
feeling. The measure dealt with the region known 
as Nebraska, — that portion of the Louisiana Pur- 
chase west of Iowa, Missouri, and Minnesota, 
including the present Kansas and Nebraska, the 
greater part of North and South Dakota and of 
Montana, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. 
By the Missouri Compromise, this region had been 
closed to slavery, as lying north of 36° 30'. By the 
Compromise of 1850 the feelings of the South had 
been salved as to California by leaving the decision 
upon the lawfulness of slavery within the territories 
of Utah and New Mexico to the inhabitants of those 
territories. The South, however, could not rest so 
long as slavery was restricted, and the success of 
the Compromise led Stephen A. Douglas, senator 
from Illinois, to bid for Southern support of his 
candidacy for the presidency, by proposing to 
apply the principle of ''squatter sovereignty " to 
the territory of Nebraska. In the view of the 
anti -slavery element in the North, this was an act 
of the basest bad faith. The North believed itself 



THE PEEIOD OF COMPEOMISE 305 

to liave borne patiently the menacings of the South, 
and to have done, if not '* with alacrity " yet with 
conscientiousness, its full duty in maintaining the 
bargain to support slavery, which had become so 
distasteful to it. Now to see the compact of 1820 
repudiated, to hear calmly suggested the division of 
the free states by a vast wedge of territory, easily 
accessible from the South, across which it seemed 
I)robable that the movement of immigrants from 
the free states would be impeded by the presence of 
slavery on the soil, at last moved the North to gen- 
uine and profound anger. 

To Garrison the free-soil wrath was a trifle. He 
did not regard it as really serious. He had watched 
the South advancing from the Missouri Compromise 
to the annexation of Texas, and thence to the Com- 
promise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law. Now 
the free-soil territories were to be invaded, and only 
the last step, the opening of the whole country to 
slavery, would remain. He was accustomed to see 
Northern bluster subside into cowardly retreat, and 
Southern threats successful in gaining all that the 
South demanded. He had no sympathy with a 
settlement which did not wholly destroy slavery in 
the United States, or separate the country entirely 
from the curse. The Nebraska bill passed May 22, 
1854. Two days later occurred the arrest in Boston 
of Anthony Burns, as a fugitive from Virginia. A 
multitude of people happened to be in the city at- 
tending various conventions. Others came expressly 
to resist the of&cers. An assault intended to release 
the fugitive, in which a deputy marshal lost his 



306 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

life, was repulsed, and at last the commissioner sur- 
rendered Burns to his master's agent. Guarded by 
the armed forces of the United States and of the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the unfortunate 
man was marched to the vessel which was to carry 
him back to slavery. 

To Abolitionists the slave power seemed stronger 
than ever. They did not believe that at this time 
more than at any other the popular indignation of 
the North meant anything. The disunion cry of 
1845, the anger against the Mexican War, the 
outburst against the Fugitive Slave Law had sunk 
into sluggish and unholy hypocritical quiet. 
Now it appeared that slavery was to spread over 
the Union. The annexation of Cuba ; the gaining 
of a foothold in Hayti ; the acquisition of a slave 
empire in the valley of the Amazon were all seri- 
ously threatened j — and where, the Abolitionists 
asked, was the force to resist these projects of the 
South, intoxicated with success ? 

On the fourth of July, 1854, at the abolitionist 
celebration in Framingham, Mass., Garrison led the 
proceedings. After Scripture readings and some 
remarks, he proceeded to manifest by a symbolic 
action '^the estimation in which he held the pro- 
slavery laws and deeds of the nation." First he 
burnt a copy of the Fugitive Slave Law. Borrow- 
ing the formula from the solemn national adjura- 
tions in Deuteronomy, he said, ''And let all the 
people say, Amen.-'' His audience responded 
cheerfully. Then he burnt the decision of the 
commissioner remanding Burns to slavery ; then 



THE PEEIOD OF COMPEOMISE 307 

tlie charge of the court as to the treasonable nature 
of the assault oi^ the court house iu the effort to 
rescue Burns. Finally, '^holding up the United 
States Constitution, he branded it as the source and 
parent of the other atrocities, — 'a covenant with 
death and an agreement with hell,' — and consumed 
it to ashes on the spot, exclaiming, * So perish all 
compromises with tyranny ! and let all the people 
say. Amen!'' " 

With this theatrical and not, as we coldly judge 
it, wholly inspiring act Garrison reached the cul- 
mination of his disunion preaching, which had been 
carried on for thirteen years. As opposed to the 
free-soil principles, the disunion policy could find 
its only statesmanlike justification on the basis of 
Garrison's own profoundest hopes in the belief that 
it might do away with slavery without a war. His 
doctrine, however, was a doctrine of peace only in 
his own honestly deluded mind, and in the minds of 
those who were led astray by his sincere yet fallacious 
reasoning. From this point forward the story of 
his life is to be told in relation to the armed conflict 
that he had dreaded ; for henceforth the forces 
which he himself had helped to create and which 
he had long impotently watched as they followed a 
course contemned by him as a feeble and wicked 
compromise, were to burst through the limits which 
he would have set for them. The struggle had iu 
reality begun to take the form of armed and violent 
conflict leading on to open war. 



CHAPTEE XIII 

THE lEEEPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 

The Nebraska Bill ostensibly left it to the people 
of each incoming state to determine whether or not 
slavery should be tolerated upon its soil. The bill 
really gave up Kansas to the horrors of a hideous 
form of internecine conflict, the unregulated violence 
of guerrilla bands, mob murder, private assassina- 
tion, waste, plunder, and arson, without the decisive 
matching of forces in the open field. As the mag- 
nitude of the conflict increased, and the cause of the 
free-soil settlers in Kansas against the Border ruf- 
fians was preached in the North as a crusade. Gar- 
rison withheld his sympathy. He still taught peace 
as a duty. When Henry Ward Beecher said, 
''You might as well read the Bible to a herd of 
buffaloes as to those fellows who follow Atchison 
and Stringfellow," Garrison replied: ''For our 
own part, we deeply compassionate the miserable 
and degraded tools of the slave propagandists, who 
know not what they do, and (as Mr. Beecher cor- 
rectly says) are ' raked together from the purlieus of 
a frontier slave state, drugged with whiskey, and 
hounded on by broken and degenerate politicians ; ' 
. . . yet they are not beasts, nor to be treated as 
beasts. . . . When Jesus said, ' Fear not those 
who kill the body,' He broke every deadly weapon ; 
when He said, . . . 'Father, forgive them,^ 



THE IREEPEESSIBLE CONFLICT 309 

. . . He did not treat them as ' a herd of buffa- 
loes,' but as poor, misguided and lost men.'^ Gar- 
rison asserted, also, that the settlers were not con- 
tending for liberty, but for their rights as white men. 
Having '' consented to make the existence of liberty 
or slavery dependent on the will of the majority, 
fairly expressed," they were but reaping the di- 
vinely ordered retribution of their own sinful 
policy. ''While they are yet standing in common 
with the great body of the American people with 
their feet upon the necks of four millions of chattel 
slaves, . . . with what face can they ask for 
the sympathy and cooperation of those who are 
battling for freedom on a world-wide basis?" ^ 
Finally, Garrison asked, if the settlers should be 
furnished with Sharp's rifles, why not the slaves? 
''Who will go for arming the slave population?" 
The answer was to be given at Harper's Ferry. 

Like the Free-Soil party, the new Eepublican 
party evoked Garrison's approval of its aims as far 
as they went, but left him dissatisfied by its devo- 
tion to the Union, and its toleration of slavery un- 
der any circumstances. His view of the Aboli- 
tionist's duty was that he must not abandon his 
principles, " for they are immutable and eternal ; " 
or lessen his demands, "for they are just and 
right;" or ''postpone the glorious object, . . . 
the immediate extinction of slavery, for that would 
be fatuity." He must not "substitute the non-ex- 
tension for the abolition of slavery, for that would 
be to wrestle with an effect, while leaving the cause 
» Life, Vol. Ill, pp. 437-440. 



310 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

untouched. '^ He must ' ' keep his own hands clean/ ^ 
and ''call to repentance" his guilty land. 

The burden of his preaching was peaceful dis- 
union. In 1855, as his sons remark,^ he anticipated 
the phrase which later, on the lips of Lincoln, be- 
came historic: — ''A church or government which 
accords the same privileges to slavery as to liberty 
is a 'house divided against itself, which cannot 
stand.'" In 1857, after the election of Buchanan, 
Garrison and his associates agitated for disunion 
with new hope. Among the names now first ap- 
pearing on the list of active propagandists, the 
most noteworthy is that of Thomas Wentworth 
Higginson, of Worcester, Mass., then a young Uni- 
tarian clergyman of generous spirit, whose enthu- 
siasm burnt with steady heat under a lively flame of 
wit and debonair cheerfulness. He was no non- 
resistant, for he had led the assault to deliver 
Anthony Burns. Like the older Abolitionists after 
the annexation of Texas, he was disappointed upon 
the election of Buchanan to find so little vigor in 
the demand for a separation from the Union. "1 
talk with my Republican friends in vain to know 
whence comes this wondrous change which has al- 
tered their whole horizon since election. I talk 
with a man who said before election : ' If Buchanan 
is elected, I am with you henceforward — I am a 
disuuionist,' and I find he thinks there must have 
been some mistake about that remark ; he thinks it 
must have been his partner wlio said it, not he. 
They all have their partners ! " "^ 

^ Life, Vol. Ill, p. 420. "^ lUd., p. 450. 



THE lEEEPEESSIBLE CONFLICT 311 

The Dred Scott decisiou of March 6, 1857, letting 
down practically all existing barriers against the in- 
trodaction of slaveholders and their slaves into 
Kansas and elsewhere, and angering and alarming 
the Kepublicans, encouraged the Abolitionists to 
believe the time auspicious for calling a disunion 
convention of all the free states, to meet in Cleve- 
land in October, 1857. The financial panic which 
began in September caused the convention to be 
postponed ; and the continuance of disturbed finan- 
cial conditions, together with the religious revival 
of 1858, prevented it from being held in that year. 
Then came the excitement of the impending con- 
flict, the political campaign, and the actual out- 
break of war. The opportunity to hold the con- 
vention had gone by. 

The growing intensity of sectional feeling, both 
North and South, found decided expression during 
the year 1858. It was in this year that Seward 
affirmed the existence of the 'Mrrei^ressible conflict 
between opposing and enduring forces," and that 
Lincoln declared : '^ ' A house divided against itself 
cannot stand ' ; I believe that this government can- 
not endure half slave and half free." Garrison, 
while doing all in his power by voice and pen to 
confirm in the North the passion for freedom, still 
consistently with his fixed principles preached 
against violence and urged peace. If it must needs 
be that the offense of war should come, he was 
determined that he should not be the man through 
whom the offense came. It is hard, however, not 
to think of him as then in a sort of waking trance. 



312 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKEISON 

While young Mr. Higginson and Theodore Parker, 
privy to the counsels of John Brown, were predict- 
ing the bloodshed which the older man at least 
should have striven to prevent, Garrison deprecated 
the warlike temper now taking possession of that 
cause which had been baptized in the spirit of 
peace, and prophesied as a result a declension in 
the moral power of the Abolitionists. 

On the night of October 16, 1859, took place the 
overt act, the baptism of blood to which Higginson 
.and Parker were looking forward. It is not neces- 
sary here to recount the story of the stern night 
and daj^ at Harper's Ferry, and of the lofty dignity 
with which Brown endured his trial and met 
his death. Garrison, on account of his non- 
resistant views, had not been made the confi- 
dant of Brown, when the latter divulged his plans 
to some Abolitionists, in order to obtain their aid. 
Garrison and Brown had met two years before in 
the parlor of Theodore Parker, and had had an 
argument before a group of listeners on the ques- 
tion of peace, Brown quoting the Old Testament, 
and Garrison the New, while Parker cited the 
rebellion of the American colonies against England 
as an analogy. Brown attended the convention of 
the New England Anti-Slavery Society at Boston in 
May, 1859, and said as he went away : ' ' These men 
are all talk; what is needed is action — action!" 

When the news from Harper's Ferry reached 
Boston, Garrison gave Brown unstinted and de- 
served praise for honesty, conscientiousness, courage 
and disinterestedness, and bore witness to Brown's 



THE lEEEPEESSIBLE CONFLICT 313 

^ ' deeply religious nature, powerfully wrought upon 
by the trials through which he had passed." 
Garrison also testified to Brown's "sincere belief 
that he had been raised up by God to deliver the 
oppressed in this country by the way he had 
chosen," and to the wisdom, dignity, and impress- 
iveness of his answers to the interrogatories 
addressed to him during his imprisonment and on 
his trial. No one can fail to recognize the force of 
Brown's nature, or to be impressed by his noble 
bearing in the face of death. Yet justice must add 
to Garrison's favorable outline of his character 
fanatic ruthlessness, which would ''shed no unnec- 
essary blood," but would spill by private assassina- 
tion or open violence all the blood deemed necessary 
to the accomplishment of his purpose ; ignorance 
and an uninformed imagination, producing an 
absurdly inadequate conception of the means 
required to attain his ends ; and narrow unintel- 
ligence, which could see in a course of action the 
one result directly intended, and could not under- 
stand that the other inevitable consequences might 
be those of most importance. Garrison's com- 
ments show how he was stirred by Brown's simple 
and heroic nature. His peace principles were not 
those of peace at any price, but of the peace of 
self-sacrifice, fortitude, and martyrdom, — which is 
nearer to a war of desperate abandonment and de- 
votion than to the peace of cowardice and servility. 
When taunted as to his non-resistant doctrines, he 
declared his unshaken faith in their beneficence 
and glory ; but said, '' Rather than see men wearing 



314 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

their chains in a cowardly and servile spirit, I 
would, as an advocate of peace . . . see them 
breaking the head of the tyrant with their chains.'^ 
Hence he wished '* success to every slave insur- 
rection.'^ 

It is in the last words quoted that Garrison's lack 
of insight into the nature of Brown's action be- 
comes evident. A rebellion from within of slaves 
aspiring to be free, Garrison might consistently 
have sympathized with and respected. Though, on 
his principles, less worthy than patient resignation, 
it would have been nobler than cowardly obedience 
to the inevitable. But the commission of cold- 
blooded murder in the attempt to incite from with- 
out a struggle for freedom among a people too tame 
even to respond should have been looked upon not 
only by him but by believers in force as mad and 
wicked. The whole effort was unreal. The few 
slaves freed by Brown returned gladly to servile 
comfort. Douglass's refusal to accompany Brown 
should have taught at least Brown's educated 
advisers how hopeless was his project. If on the 
other hand, the action of Brown had a dramatic 
element and was intended to impress the world in 
case the direct object was not attained, the prompt 
repudiation of it by the Eepublican leaders proves 
that it was miscalculated. Brown's acts neither 
helped nor hindered the cause of freedom. As his 
slayings at Pottawattomie had no effect but to 
make the conflict more sanguinary, so his deed at 
Harper's Ferry freed no negroes, changed no votes, 
and gave strength to no hesitant souls. It alarmed 



THE lEBEPKESSIBLE CONFLICT 315 

the South, producing a crop of Southern violence 
such that Garrison compiled a tract of a hundred 
and forty -four pages on the subject, called "The 
New Eeign of Terror." Assuredly, as a non- 
resistant, Garrison never had a better text for his 
sermon than in the violence of John Brown. 

Garrison's means had been heavily taxed by the 
anti-slavery hospitality of which his house was 
inevitably the centre. The obligation to relieve him 
was felt by some of the Abolitionists to rest upon 
them as a body ; and one of them in particular, Mr. 
Charles F. Hovey, a man of wealth, contributed lib- 
erally to that end. During his life he often sent 
gifts, small or large, unobtrusively and with delicate 
kindness. With homely thoughtfulness, he at one 
time, when Mrs. Garrison had a houseful of guests, 
sent her a barrel of flour, accompanying it with a 
graceful note. Mr. Hovey was a generous con- 
tributor to the fund with which the house. No. 14 Dix 
Place, near Hollis Street, in which the Garrisons 
had been living since 1853, was bought for them in 
1855, and notified Garrison that he intended to pay 
him annually the interest on a sum equal to a 
legacy designed for him. Garrison accepted the 
gift, stipulating that the donor should feel at 
liberty to discontinue it at any time and for any 
reason, and that it should not be regarded as in any 
way controlling the liberty of the recipient's 
thought and speech. At Mr. Hovey' s death, which 
occurred in 1859, he left personal bequests to 
several of the Abolitionists who had suffered in 
purse as a result of their devotion, and established 



316 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

a fund for the support of a number of reforms. 
The trustees were chosen from the *' extreme left" 
of the Garrisonians. 

Toward the end of 1858, Garrison lost his aunt, 
Mrs. Charlotte Newell, his mother's youngest sister. 
Since 1854 he had borne the burden of her support, 
and found the expenses of her last illness a heavy 
load to carry. It was made lighter by the curious 
discovery of a forgotten deposit of several hundred 
dollars which had been placed by Garrison's mother 
in a savings-bank in Baltimore, and which was paid 
over to him as the sole heir. 

During the years from 1855 to 1860 Garrison's 
health continued miserable, and he was frequently 
obliged to give up his work for a time. Through- 
out nearly the whole of 1860, he was unable to lec- 
ture, and for a great part of the year almost unable 
to write, as the result of a bronchial affection. The 
financial panic, moreover, pressed very hard on the 
Garrisons, whose means at best were precarious. 
Their hospitality and their liberality to their rela- 
tives were not the only extraordinary burdens upon 
them ; their hearts were open to the cry of all dis- 
tress, and from their scanty store they gave freely 
to the suffering near them and the wietched far 
away. 

Garrison's few articles in the Liberator in the year 
1860 reiterated his judgment of the Eepublican 
party ; — that in it was his hope, not so much for 
what it was as for what it promised to become. On 
the other hand, the division of the Democratic 
party on sectional lines was instantly hailed by him. 



THE IKEEPEESSIBLE CONFLICT 317 

The election of Lincoln was by this division as- 
sured, and the act plainly declared that the South 
was in earnest in its threats of secession ; since, 
otherwise, the leaders of the party would not have 
thrown the election to the Eepublicans. When 
Lincoln was nominated, Garrison had nothing to 
say. He admitted to the Liberator with reluctance 
an article by Phillips, inveighing against Lincoln 
as a ''slave-hound of Illinois," for voting in favor 
of a provision for the return of fugitive slaves from 
the District of Columbia, as a necessary part in a 
measure for the abolition of slavery there. Lincoln's 
own words and the attitude of his party seemed 
to promise nothing directly in favor of abolition ; 
yet the tone of the South apparently gave assurance 
that secession was to take place ; and secession, as 
Garrison was convinced, meant, if not in one way, 
then in another, the end of slavery. 

After the election there followed what seemed to 
Garrison the inevitable reaction. In December a 
meeting in Boston ''in memory of John Brown" 
was broken up, and a threatening mob followed 
Wendell Phillips home from the Music Hall, where 
he had been delivering an address. In Massa- 
chusetts and in Congress alike was exhibited a 
readiness to modify what little had been done 
toward the ends which Garrison cherished. The 
Eepublican party was determined to leave the South 
no excuse for secession, based on Northern failure 
to carry out the agreements of the Constitution. It 
must be obvious that Garrison could not act with or 
support such a party. The leaders, the rank and 



318 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON 

file of men, the whole world had no expectation 
that the abolition of slavery was to come soon 
through Republican success. The utmost hoped on 
one side and feared on the other, was that slavery 
should be confined within the area which it already 
occupied, and should in time, perhaps as the result 
of economic forces, die out. It was believed by 
many who supported the hopeless candidature of 
Bell and Everett that within ten years, from pre- 
vailing indications, the North would have grown so 
strong financially and commercially as to convince 
the South of the futility of any plan of successful 
withdrawal. The slavery question was to be settled 
by methods not as yet discernible to human wit. 

When the news of the secession of South Carolina 
reached Massachusetts, Garrison's view of the situ- 
ation was that now the country could free itself 
from slavery at a stroke. He had long urged peace- 
ful dissolution ; why not now permit a peaceful se- 
cession of the slave states, and leave them to reap 
the fruits of their own sin and folly? Thus, in the 
Liberator of January 4, 1861, he says : "All Union- 
saving eiforts are simply idiotic. At last the * cov- 
enant with death ' is annulled and the ' agreement 
with hell ' broken — at least by the action of South 
Carolina, and ere long by all the slaveholding 
states, for their doom is one.'' It was in accord- 
ance with these views that on February 15, 1861, he 
proposed a convention of free states, "called to or- 
ganize an independent government on free and just 
principles," maintaining that "to think of whip- 
ping the South into subjection, and extorting al- 



THE lEEEPKESSIBLE CONFLICT 319 

legiance from four millions of people at the cannon's 
mouth is utterly chimerical. True, it in in the power 
of the North to deluge her soil with blood, and in- 
flict upon her the most terrible sufferings ; but not 
to break her spirit or change her determination." 
He thus saves himself logically and is consistent, 
but apparently by making the slaves themselves a 
negligible quantity. 

If Garrison's propositions sound chimerical, we 
must remember that not only Buchanan's adminis- 
tration, but the leaders of the Eepublican party did 
not yet put forth a clear policy to meet secession. 
Garrison, meantime, judged the Eepublican leaders 
by standards of statesmanship absolutely incompat- 
ible with his own principles of non-resistance, but 
which do him credit. Of Seward he writes : **In 
this state of things,— when the elements are melting 
with fervent heat, and thunders are uttering their 
voices, and a great earthquake is shaking the land 
from centre to circumference, threatening to engulf 
whatever free institutions are yet visible, — Mr. 
Seward, with the eyes of expectant millions fast- 
ened upon him as ^ the pilot to weather the storm,' 
rises in the Senate to utter well-turned periods in 
glorification of a Union no longer in existence, and 
to talk of ^meeting prejudice with conciliation, ex- 
action with concession which surrenders no prin- 
ciple (!), and violence with the right hand of 
peace' ! The tiger is to be propitiated by crying 
' pussy-cat ! ' and leviathan drawn out with a hook ! 
The word * treason ' or ' traitors ' is never once 
mentioned— no recital is made of any of the num- 



320 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON 

berless outrages committed — no call is made upon 
the President to be true to liis oath, and to meet the 
public exigency with all the forces at his command 
— no patriotic indignation flushes his cheek — but 
all is calm as a summer's morning, cool, compliant, 
unimpassioned ! His boldest word is, ' We already 
have disorder, and violence is begun.' How very 
discreet ! It is a penny-whistle used to hush down 
a thuuder-storm of the first magnitude — capping 
Vesuvius with a sheet of straw paper ! And this is 
the statesmanship of William H. Seward, in a cri- 
sis unparalleled in our national history ! Stand 
aside ! ' The hour ' has come, but where is * the 
man' V^ ' 

Garrison soon felt confident that in Lincoln there 
was '^ a man," if not " tJie man " ; that in him there 
were the force and insight adequate to meet great 
occasions, if not to dominate them. Dissatisfied as 
his views forced him to be with Lincoln's frank 
declaration of his obedience to the Constitution, he 
spoke with respect of his dignity and courage at the 
time of his inauguration, and of his refusal to make 
concessions to treason or compromises with re- 
bellion. On the other hand, the full measure of 
Lincoln's transcendent intellectual power and sad 
and patient greatness was probably never taken by 
Garrison. His praises soaud grudging, and his 
criticism carping. For example, he says of Lin- 
coln's message in 18G2,- '^ It is very evident the Pres- 
ident writes all his own messages, for they are all 
alike bunglingly expressed, and quite discreditable 

»Xi/c, Vol. IV, p. 13. ^Liberator, March 14, 1862. 



THE IRKEPEESSIBLE CONFLICT 321 

in that particuliir as official documents." Whether 
or no this charge against the style of Lincoln's 
earlier state papers is well grounded, the comment 
is proof of Garrison's failure to appreciate the re- 
markable skill and still more remarkable temper 
of these documents, which combine political tact 
and statesmanlike depth and power with absolute 
frankness. 

The concussion of the first shot against the works 
of Sumter may still be felt across the intervening 
years almost as a physical fact. So forceful a shock 
was needed to rouse the mighty nation from its 
slumber, restless as that slumber was, and impel it 
to put forth its strength on the worthiest occasion 
and in the greatest conflict the world has known. 
When the war had once begun, some of the Aboli- 
tionists *' stood still to see the salvation" which 
their God was working, and some could i)erceive no 
signs of hope or promise. Garrison saw that the 
tremendous conflict was tending ''irresistibly toward 
the goal of universal emancipation, or else to a 
separation between the free and slaveholdiug 
states." He joined in advising the omission. of the 
anniversary meeting of the American Society, and 
counseled the Abolitionists to do nothing to thwart 
or impede the movement of popular feeling against 
the South. Thus, in the Liberator his language for 
months was far more guarded than usual in its 
criticism of political conditions and public men. 
The din of politics had brought to his ears some 
terrestrial lessons, 



322 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

The admiuistration of Liucoln had come into 
power pledged not to interfere with slavery where 
it existed. As for Lincoln himself, he *' disliked 
slavery and feared emancipation." His duty, more- 
over, compelled him to hold together all the ele- 
ments of the Union of which he was the head ; and 
in particular it obliged him not to offend the loyal 
border slave states. Hence for many months he 
himself not only did not take any steps toward free- 
ing the slaves, but disavowed and annulled the 
proceedings of his subordinates looking in that 
direction. Within two months after Lincoln's 
inauguration. Garrison called for emancipation 
under the war power, following the suggestion made 
long before by John Quincy Adams. For the time 
being, however, he did not press this demand vigor- 
ously. Not until Lincoln's prompt letter of Sep- 
tember 11th, revoking the unwise and premature 
order of Fremont emancipating the slaves of rebels 
in arms in Missouri, did Garrison comment unfa- 
vorably on the President's course. Then, printing 
the letter within heavy black rules, he charged the 
President with a "serious dereliction of duty." 

To Lincoln's message at the end of the year 
he gave no praise except for recommending the 
recognition of the independence of Hayti and 
Liberia. As the year 1862 advanced, Garrison felt 
that the time had come to make stronger efforts to 
organize public opinion in favor of emancipation as 
a war measure, and wrote and circulated a memorial 
to Congress, urging the unconditional emancipation 
of the slaves of rebels, and emancipation with com- 



THE IRREPBESSIBLE CONFLICT 323 

pensation of the slaves of loyal citizens. In an 
editorial addressed to the President and his Cabinet, 
he declared, tastelessly italicizing the words : '' To 
refuse to deliver these captive millions ivho are legally 
in your power ^ is tantamount to tlie crime of their 
original enslavement ; and their blood shall a right- 
eous God require at your hands.' ' ^ He devoted his 
editorials more and more to the cause of immediate 
emancipation, and at the end of the year replaced 
the old motto, — "The United States Constitution is 



I) 



a covenant with death and an agreement with hell,' 
with a new one, — '^ Proclaim liberty throughout the 
land, and to all the inhabitants thereof." 

The outbreak of the war by increasing prices, 
disturbing finances, and engrossing the attention of 
the public, had greatly diminished the support given 
to anti-slavery journals. It was proposed to unite 
the Standard and the Liberator in order to keep both 
alive ; but Garrison, doubtful as it was whether the 
Liberator could be maintained, was determined not 
to compromise his freedom by any such alliance. 
The excitement and hopeful anticipation of the 
year seem to have affected his health favorably. 
He attended the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society 
at West Chester, in the heart of Pennsylvania 
Quakerdom, and spent a day or two on the way in 
New York, where he was kindly received by people 
who had previously shown him little sympathy, and 
another day in Philadelphia among a circle of 
Quakers, between whom and himself had long sub- 
sisted bonds of close association. This year he lost 
» Life, Vol. IV, p. 35. 



324 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEKISON 

his old friend Francis Jackson, who left becxuests to 
various reforms and a personal legacy to Garrison. 
In the first part of 1862, though Congress had 
given proof of growing anti-slavery tendencies 
throughout the North, the administration showed 
no sign of heeding the cry for emancipation. In 
March, Lincoln made the suggestion that the 
Federal government might cooperate with any state 
desiring to accept a system of gradual emancipation, 
— a step hailed with enthusiasm by Phillips, but 
with contempt by Garrison, who saw in every post- 
ponement of the final act a needless and fatuous 
compromise with sin. Congress by many acts con- 
tinued to advance the cause of freedom in detail ; 
but the President again cast down the abolitionist 
hopes. In May, when Major- General David Hunter 
issued a military order, abolishing slavery in the 
Department of the South, including Georgia^ 
Florida and South Carolina, Lincoln sent a message 
revoking the order even before he liad official 
notice. Garrison asked him the same question he 
had put to Seward, ^' Canst thou draw out leviathan 
with a hook?'' Lincoln still urged his plan of 
gradual emancipation, combining with it the per- 
mission to individual states to elect immediate 
emancipation, and a scheme for colonizing the 
negroes. The Border States would have none of it, 
and the President, feeling the growing strength of 
the sentiment in favor of emancipation, warned 
their representatives that they had better accept 
such an offer before it was too late, for their system 
would be likely to perish *'by mere friction and 



THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 325 

abrasion'* if tlie war continued. Representative 
colored men, on the other hand, decisively repudi- 
ated the idea of colonization. Garrison heaped scorn 
upon it as ** puerile, absurd, illogical, impertinent, 
untimely.'* Finally, in September, 1862, seventeen 
months after the fall of Sumter^ the President issued 
his proclamation emaucipating all slaves in the 
regions which should be in rebellion on the first of 
January following. The Border States were not 
included, and plans for gradual emancipation and 
for colonization were embodied in the proclamation. 

Through the long period of waiting. Garrison, 
though he urged the President to action and criti- 
cized his delay, did all he could to prevent aboli- 
tion societies from condemniug the administration. 
He perceived and stated with vigor some of the 
grounds why emancii^ation should be put off until 
public opinion should be consolidated in its favor, 
and expressed confidence in the general rightness of 
the President's purposes, uuuecessarily timid and 
cautious though he thought him. When taunted 
about his new political views, he replied wittily : 
' ' You remember what Benedick in the play says : 
^ When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not 
think I should live till I were married.' And when 
I said I would not sustain the Coustitution, because 
it was ^ a covenant with death and an agreement 
with hell,' I had no idea that I should live to see 
deatli and hell secede." ^ 

In the same spirit he strove to make English 
sympathizers with abolition perceive that the in- 
' Life, Vol. IV, p. 40. 



326 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISOl^ 

evitable result of K"ortherii success would be eman- 
cipation, whether the North willed it or not ; — that 
the South was fighting for slavery, and that the 
North, whatever its declared objects, was fighting 
for freedom, and had a right to the support of the 
emancipationists of all the world. The sole deter- 
mining force which withheld the British govern- 
ment from recognizing the Confederacy, and pre- 
vented the equipping of more and more dangerous 
*'Alabamas'' was the anti-slavery sentiment of the 
non-conformist middle class. Effective organiza- 
tion was given to this sentiment by the abolitionist 
societies, largely of Garrison's planting, and mostly 
directed by his friends and associates. It is just, 
therefore, as his sons suggest,^ to attribute to him an 
important part in the formation of the English pub- 
lic opinion which was so valuable an indirect sup- 
port to the Union cause. 

Garrison welcomed the proclamation as a step in 
the right direction, but felt no real enthusiasm for 
it. It was after all simply a war measure, — a 
means of weakening the enemy, not the tardy right- 
ing of a great wrong. The President was still pro- 
posing compensated emancipation in the loyal 
Border States, and avowed his desire to postpone it 
in those states for a long period. He suggested 
1900 as an appropriate date, and avoided giving 
any approval to the abolition of slavery in the loyal 
states except by voluntary action of the states co- 
operating with the general government. Garrison's 
judgment of Lincoln's cautious policy was ex- 

' Life, Vol. IV, p. 66. 



THE IREEPEESSIBLE CONFLICT 327 

pressed in a letter to his daughter : ''The Presi- 
dent can do nothing for freedom except by circum- 
locution and delay. How prompt was his action 
against Fremont and Hunter ! '' Garrison had not 
before him the information which proves that Lin- 
coln issued the proclamation at the earliest moment 
and in the most decisive terms practicable, without 
losing that support from the public opinion of the 
North which was requisite to making the act of 
emancipation really effective. As it was, the reac- 
tionary storm which followed the proclamation 
seemed for a time likely to overturn the Repub- 
lican majority in Congress, and to put back the 
cause of emancipation further than ever. Yet Gar- 
rison's impatient criticism is not to be blamed. As 
Lincoln's delay until public opinion should be 
ready to accept emancipation was a part of his duty 
in his capacity as a public servant, so Garrison's 
demands for immediate and extreme action were a 
part of his function as a maker of that future public 
opinion to which the President sagaciously ap- 
pealed now, as he had earlier appealed during the 
famous debates of 1858. 

Toward the end of the year 1863 it became neces- 
sary to resort to the draft to supply soldiery. Gar- 
rison, as the foremost of the non-resistant Aboli- 
tionists, was called on to express his views of their 
duty under the circumstances. First, he vindicated 
for non-resistants the same exemption from military 
service accorded in some places to Quakers ; but he 
insisted that the right to claim this exemption be- 
longed to no one who by voting became a part of a 



328 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

government based on force. If a genuine non-re- 
sistant were drafted, it was his duty to suffer fine 
and imprisonment, but he had no right to hire a 
substitute. If his fine, however, were used to em- 
ploy a soldier in his place, that was none of his 
concern. As to Abolitionists who were not non- 
resistants on principle, but who refrained from vot- 
ing on account of the i)ro-siavery clauses in the 
Constitution, Garrison declared that as the govern- 
ment was and must be on the side of liberty, it 
should *^ receive the sanction and support of every 
Abolitionist [i. e., of every fighting Abolitionist] 
whether in a moral or a military point of view." 

The new respect in which Abolitionists were held 
gave Garrison an opportunity to reach new audi- 
tors. One of the pleasantest manifestations of the 
change was an invitation, — the first of the kind he 
had ever received, — to address the Adelphic Union 
of Williams College, August 4, 1862. At the ad- 
dress hardly any of the faculty were present, except 
Prof. John Bascom, a man of reforming temper and 
moral force, who later suffered for his activity in 
favor of prohibition, and who is alive at the time 
of this writing in venerable age. The very success 
of the abolition cause made it more and more diffi- 
cult to keep up the abolition societies and papers. 
Some Abolitionists of influence believed that if 
Garrison and Wendell Phillips were to make public 
addresses and to confer with i)olitical leaders, they 
would achieve more than through the societies. 
Some withheld their support from the established 
vehicles of agitation ; and Garrison in the first part 



THE IRREPKESSIBLE CONFLICT 329 

of the year 1862 was urged to go to WasliiugtoD, 
where Phillips was received with marked attention. 
Unfortunately he caught a severe cold in February, 

1862, at an anti-slavery convention at Albany, and 
was unable for several months to travel. At the 
May meeting of the American Society in New York, 
and of the Massachusetts Society in Boston, which 
he attended, the number of Abolitionists present 
was smaller than ever before, but the addresses at- 
tracted large and enthusiastic audiences of non- 
Abolitionists. 

The carrying into effect of the Emancipation 
Proclamation on the appointed day, January 1, 

1863, was celebrated by Garrison with a full sense 
of the historic importance of the great event. His 
efforts were now put forth in favor of the abolition 
of slavery in the loyal Border States, and of the es- 
tablishment of institutions to care for and educate 
the freedmen ; resolutions on both subjects were 
adopted at several meetings which he attended. 
The usual May meeting was held in New York, 
but the attendance was even smaller than the year 
before. The public received the Abolitionists 
kindly. At a meeting where Garrison spoke, the 
mayor of New York sat on the platform, and when 
Garrison entered he was received with bursts of ap- 
plause. '' What a change ! " he writes, ^' . . . 
and remember, this was a meeting called by the 
Sixteenth Eepublican Ward Association!" In 
spite of the small attendance, it was felt that the 
society must continue until its work was done. 

The results of the elections held during the year, 



330 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

on the whole, ratified the policy of emancipation ; 
and in the Border States local parties in favor of 
immediate emancipation showed vigor. In Mary- 
land and Missouri these parties proved to be in the 
majority at the elections. Yet the administration 
refused to encourage them, and the President still 
argued in favor of gradual emancipation and threw 
the weight of his influence against the Missouri 
party. Moreover, the Emancipation Proclamation 
had reduced though it had not destroyed the 
Republican majorities, and even for the gradual 
abolition policy of the President it was still impos- 
sible to obtain sufficient political support. The 
American Anti- Slavery Society, therefore, which 
met at Philadelphia, December 3d and 4th, 1863, 
still felt that it had something to live for. 

The greater part of the meeting was given up to 
reminiscences by the older members of the society. 
Most delightful of all the experiences of the meet- 
ing to Garrison was the reunion of the estranged 
factions of the abolitionist body. Either per- 
sonally or by letter not only ^'Old Organization" 
Abolitionists of the radical school, like Phillips 
and Garrison, but ''New Organizers," like his old 
friend Arthur Tappan, politicians grown old in the 
warfare, such as Giddings, converts from Garri- 
sonianism, like Frederick Douglass, and the new 
political Abolitionists, like B. Gratz Brown, the 
leader of the Missouri abolition party, all united in 
the rejoicings. Douglass spoke impressively for 
confidence in Lincoln, and Garrison recalled the 
name of Lundy for veneration and regard. 



THE IREEPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 331 

The emaDcipatioa of the slaves was closely con- 
nected with the enlistment of negroes in the Union 
armies. The policy of utilizing the great military 
force of the negro population had been urged from 
the beginning of the war, on principle by the anti- 
slavery men, and as a military necessity by various 
generals and by Simon Cameron when Secretary of 
War. The government was loath to arm the 
blacks. It distrusted them, and it feared to excite 
antagonism by such a step. Hence, though the 
enlistment of negroes was made legal in 1862, it 
was not until 1863, after the Emancipation Procla- 
mation had been issued, that the policy was entered 
upon in earnest. Enlistment in the case of a slave 
naturally carried with it the emancipation of the 
enlisted man and of his family, and thus had the 
practical effect of extending military emancipation 
into the Border States. Indeed, military eman- 
cipation and the enlistment of negroes had from the 
first been associated as two aspects of a possible 
strategic necessity in Lincoln's mind. Massachu- 
setts was the first Northern state to enlist a volun- 
teer regiment of negroes, the Fifty-fourth Mas- 
sachusetts. The colonel, Robert Gould Shaw, and a 
number of the other officers, were sons of Garrison's 
friends, and had been playmates of his children. 
The negro rank and file faced slavery if captured ; 
the young white officers ignominy, a dishonorable 
death and an unmarked grave. The heroism 
which was blithely ready to meet such a future as 
well as the common perils of warfare deeply im- 
pressed Garrison ; and when his own son, George 



332 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

T. Garrison, who did not sliare his father^s non- 
resistant views and who had been anxious to enter 
the army after the Emancipation Proclamation, 
eagerly grasped an offer of a commission as second 
lieutenant in the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts, the 
second regiment of negroes, the father accepted his 
decision gravely and respectfully, though sadly. 

As the first black regiment, with its flashing eyes 
and its soldierly march, passed by on its way to the 
front. Garrison stood to watch it from the corner of 
Wilson's Lane, now Devonshire Street, at a spot 
over which he had been dragged by the mob in 
1835, and within a few^ feet of the scene of the 
Boston Massacre in 1770 when negro blood was 
shed. Before the regiment in which his son was an 
officer was ready to depart, the draft riots in New 
York and the anti-negro riots in Detroit occurred. 
There was danger of disturbance in Boston. The 
Garrisons thought it safest to leave their house for a 
day or two ; and the soldiers, instead of parading 
on the Common, were marched straight to the 
transport which was to carry them to Charleston. 
The father keenly felt the lack of opportunity to 
bid his son farewell and to give him his blessing, 
and v7rote to tell how he had tried to reach him. 
** Multitudes, with myself, were greatly disap- 
pointed that the regiment did not parade on the 
Common, where we all expected to take our fare- 
well leave. I followed you, however, all the way 
down to the vessel, hoping to speak to you ; but I 
found myself on the wrong side, and the throng was 
so great and the marching so continuous that I 



THE IREBPHESSIBLE CONFLICT 333 

could uot press my way tliroiigli. After you were 
all on board, I went with a number of friends to the 
next wharf below, where we waited more than an 
hour, hoping to see you off and to give you our 
parting salute. But the rain poured heavily down, 
and we were all compelled to beat a retreat — keenly 
regretting that we could not, even from a distance, 
shout farewell." ' 

Some choice legends have gathered about Garri- 
son's fame ; one is that the name he bore was not 
his real one ; another is to the effect that he repudi- 
ated this militant son on account of his own non-re- 
sistant creed. His simple, manly words as given 
above are a sufficient answer to the latter charge. 
There are other equally absurd statements concern- 
ing him, not worth refutation, yet curious as show- 
ing how a mythus develops even from so simple and 
straightforward a career as his. 

Near the end of December, 1863, Garrison's wife, 
who had been his support and consolation, his 
prudent counselor and the wise regulator of his 
impulses, was without warning stricken with 
paralysis of the entire left side. The day before, 
she had presented the appearance of blooming 
health, and had displayed her usual energy in 
works of charity by soliciting aid for the freedraen 
among friends. It would not have been strange if 
the activity and anxiety of her life had earlier 
broken down even her strong constitution. The 
restrictions put upon her by the smallness and un- 
certainty of the income for her household had been 
^ Life, Vol. IV, p. 83. 



334 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

severe even in the provision made for the ordinary 
exioenses of her numerous family, to say nothing of 
the extraordinary disbursements to which her 
husband's position obliged him. If it had not been 
for Mrs. Garrison's perfect health, extremely 
systematic habits, and severe economy, debt would 
certainly have overwhelmed Garrison and forced 
him to discontinue the lAherator^ and greatly to 
curtail his anti-slavery activity. Naturally, con- 
cerned as she was with the detail of fact, and 
careful of the future, she was at times perturbed and 
perplexed. Her caution was useful to her husband, 
sanguine by temperament and faith ; while he took 
the load from her heart and brought smiles to her 
lips by his cheer. She gave some system to her 
husband's disorderly activity and helped him to 
carry on his work in a businesslike way. In 
addition to all her labor and responsibility, she was 
beset with constant anxiety as to her husband's 
safety. The calm courage which he showed before 
a mob was easier than cheerfulness under the 
anxiety hanging over the quiet household during 
his long and frequent absences. Even when Garri- 
son was at home this fear was never quite gone. 
He constantly received letters of anonymous 
menace, and the passage between his home and his 
office did not always seem safe. On occasions like 
that of the Eynders mob, when Garrison deliber- 
ately faced danger and even death, Mrs. Garrison's 
anxiety was of course poignant. Withal, she was 
devoted to the cause to which her husband had 
devoted himself, and was ready to offer herself to 



THE IREEPEESSIBLE CONFLICT 335 

suffering and him to danger rather than to give up 
the great work. As is not infrequently the case 
with persons who enjoy superabundant health, her 
first illness was like an earthquake shock, shatter- 
ing her frame. 

She lived eleven years, patient and cheerful, de- 
pendent for care upon her husband and their only 
daughter. Her sons tell of her once needing a 
handkerchief, and of taking her skirt in her teeth 
and dragging herself up-stairs, in order to avoid dis- 
turbing her daughter, who was putting her baby to 
bed. 

Mrs. Garrison^s illness of course severely taxed 
the strength of Garrison, no longer in youthful 
vigor. Toward the end of January, however, he 
was once more able to attend meetings of the anti- 
slavery societies. The certainty that slavery would 
soon disappear from American soil took away what 
had been the soul of Abolitionism. Was it still 
necessary for those who fought in the cause of free- 
dom, never to be fully won, to come out and be sep- 
arate ; or could they now act upon public sentiment 
through the ordinary channels ? Upon this ques- 
tion the small remnant of the anti-slavery organiza- 
tions was once more rent in twain, and Garrison for 
the first time found himself in a conservative mi- 
nority as to a vital point in the societies of which 
he had been the master spirit. The initial form of 
the contest was a skirmish over the question of sup- 
porting Lincoln for reelection. Phillips and others 
distrusted his purposes as to the treatment of the 
freedmen. Lincoln desired to rehabilitate the se- 



336 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

ceded states, not as couq tiered provinces, but as in- 
tegral parts of the Uuiou, and sought for elements 
out of Avhich a representative government could 
glow by natural processes. All Abolitionists de- 
sired guarantees that slavery should not be insidi- 
ously reintroduced under some specious name, and 
that the freedmeu should not be exposed to the op- 
pression or revenge of their late masters, or to the 
eumity of the "poor whites." Phillips already de- 
manded the suffrage for them, as their only means of 
defense. Garrison had come to believe in the right- 
eousness of Lincoln's purposes, and regarded the 
support of him as obligatory upon Abolitionists ; 
since for him to fail of reelection would be in effect 
a condemnation of the emancipation policy. At 
the same time, he hesitated to approve his method 
of reconstruction. Hence, when Phillips proposed 
in January to declare that the "government was 
ready to sacrifice the honor and interest of the 
North to secure a sham peace," Garrison would 
have said that the government was "wt danger "^^ of 
so doing. He was unwilling to follow Phillips in 
charging the President with perfidy. The vote 
which was taken was a test of the strength of the 
new factions within the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery 
Society, in which the resolutions were proposed, 
and resulted unfavorably to Garrison's views by a 
small majority. Throughout the year 1864, Phillips 
kept up his attack on Lincoln for his readiness to 
reconstruct the states without negro suffrage. Ex- 
pressing his sorrow for Garrison's course, he said : 
" A million dollars would have been a cheap pur- 



THE lEREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 337 

chase for the admiuistratiou of the Liberator^ s ar- 
ticle on the presi(leuc3\ " Phillips went so far as 
to become a delegate to the Massachusetts State Re- 
publican Convention, held in May, in order that he 
might oppose the election to the national convention 
of delegates in favor of Lincoln, and spoke against 
resolutions endorsing the President's administra- 
tion. The convention swept over him, and adopted 
the resolutions by acclamation. His bitterness led 
him to the grotesque folly at the New England 
Anti-Slavery Convention of charging the President 
with ''carrying on the war to reelect himself, to 
conciliate the disloyal white man." ' Phillips, 
Stephen S. Foster, Abby Kelley Foster and Parker 
Pillsbury, Garrison's old anti -clerical associates, 
were the chief supporters of the attack on the ad- 
ministration. Garrison, with H. C. Wright and 
George Thompson, who had come again to America 
in February, steadily opposed them ; and when a 
convention of Radicals, including Phillips, nomi- 
nated General Fremont at a convention held in 
Cleveland on May 31st, Garrison called attention to 
the fact that this nomination had been made in the 
face of the existence not only of the war, but of a 
wide-spread ''Copperhead " conspiracy in the North, 
and asserted that there never was a more abortive or a 
more ludicrous gathering, politically speaking, than 
the Cleveland convention. It will be remembered 
that though Fremont accepted the nomination in a 
letter full of bitter words against Lincoln, he later 
withdrew, his judgment convincing him, after the 

» Life, Vol. IV. p. 110. 



338 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

publication of the Democratic platform iu August, 
that only by the union of all factious of the Repub- 
lican paity could the safety of the country against 
either disunion or slavery be assured. Of the in- 
significant candidacy of Fremont Garrison spoke 
with contempt. 

Garrison was a spectator at the Republican con- 
vention held in Baltimore, on June 7th and 8th. 
The nomination was unanimous from the beginning, 
except that the radical Missouri delegates, dissatis- 
fied with Lincoln's failure to support abolition in 
the loyal Border States, voted once for Grant and 
then changed their vote. ''When the result was 
announced," Garrison wrote, "the enthusiasm was 
indescribable ; and yet it was not comparable with 
the electric outbreak which followed the adojjtion 
of the following resolution : ' 3. Resolved, That as 
slavery was the cause and now constitutes the 
strength of this rebellion, and as it must be al- 
ways and everywhere hostile to the principles of 
republican government, justice and the national 
safety demand its utter and complete extirpation 
from the soil of the republic ; and that we uphold 
and maintain the acts and proclamations by which 
the government, in its own defense, has aimed a 
death-blow at this gigantic evil. We are in favor, 
furthermore, of such an amendment to the Con- 
stitution, to be made by the people in conformity 
with its provisions, as shall terminate and forever 
prohibit the existence of slavery within the limits 
or the jurisdiction of the United States.' " ' 

1 Life, Vol. IV, p. 113. 



THE lEREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 339 

Garrison rejoiced, and might well rejoice, that he 
was present when this resolution was adopted. In 
the account of the convention which he published 
in the Liberator^ he described the joyful enthusiasm 
of the delegates when the vote was taken, and 
asked: '^Was not a spectacle like that rich com- 
pensation for more than thirty years of universal 
personal opprobrium, bitter jDersecution, and mur- 
derous outlawry ?' ' As he watched the enthusiastic 
delegates shouting and shaking hands, his mind 
traveled back not only over his own long and bitter 
struggle, but over the history of the whole abolition 
movement. Not he alone, but all who had braved 
contempt and abuse for so many years in the con- 
test with slavery were at last vindicated. He had 
beheld, as he thought in still more solemn mood, 
^4he vindication of Eternal Truth and Justice.'' 

The journey to Baltimore was the first Garrison 
had made to that city siuce his imi^risonment there. 
The old jail was torn down, and he was disappointed 
in his expectation of being able to visit the cell in 
which he had been confined. From Baltimore he 
went on to \Yashington. Lincoln received him 
cordially, and when Garrison told him how difficult 
he had found it to approve the President's course 
until the publication of the Emancipation Proclama- 
tion, he explained the grounds of his policy of delay. 
It was at his suggestion, as he informed Garrison, 
that the resolution in favor of the Thirteenth 
Amendment had been proposed to the Republican 
convention. By the passage of the amendment, 
the emancipation of the slaves would be put beyond 



340 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

question and beyoud the possibility of being 
jeopardized by his death or failure to be re- 
elected. 

Even at this time, when the final success of the 
Union armies seemed certain, and the policy of 
emancipation had been warmly approved by the 
great majority of the people of the Korth, the 
Thirteenth Amendment failed to secure the necessary 
two-thirds vote in Congress ; and only by the most 
strenuous efforts and against the opposition of 
prominent Republicans were the Fugitive Slave 
Laws repealed. The reelection of Lincoln, how- 
ever, was an endorsement of his policy of the 
utmost practical moment, and was hailed with 
gratification by Garrison and the great majority of 
the Abolitionists. 

At the end of the year, the constant problem of 
maintaining the Liberator came up with more 
urgency than ever. The cost of paper had increased 
again. The Hovey Fund Committee, the majority 
of whom were extreme Abolitionists once called 
Garrisonian, had cut off their subscription for a 
hundred copies, on the ground that the paper had 
become a Republican organ. Others assumed the 
burden, some new friends came forward, and it 
was resolved to continue until the passage of the 
Thirteenth Amendment should crown the long 
struggle with formal and final success. Garrison 
had also again to decline an invitation to merge the 
Liberator and the Standard. He was determined to 
keep his paper independent to the last, in order, as 
he wrote to Oliver Johnson, the editor of the 



THE lEREPEESSIBLE CONFLICT 341 

Standard^ to retain '^ its historic position and moral 
prestige" unimpaired. 

The triumph of the Northern arms was rapidly 
approachijig, and with it came what was to Garri- 
son the greater triumph of the cause to which he 
had devoted his life. In both fields, that of arms 
and that of morals, each advancing stej) was the 
ground of public rejoicing. Hence the first few 
months of the year 1866 were a continuous festival, 
suddenly interrupted by the murder of the Presi- 
dent. On the 31st of January the Thirteenth 
Amendment at last received the requisite two-thirds 
majority in the House of Representatives, and was 
ready to be submitted for ratification to the states. 
To Garrison this event not only was glorious in 
itself, but was a testimony that he was no longer a 
stranger and an outcast among his countrymen. 
Many pleasant attentions were shown him. He was 
invited to deliver an address on Washington's Birth- 
day before the citizens of his native town of New- 
buryport. His political assistance was sought b}^ 
prominent personages, one asking him to support 
Governor Andrew's claims to a place in the Cabinet. 
He was recognized as a political force by the ad- 
ministration, and the Secretary of War wrote to 
him personally to explain some misinterpreted pro- 
ceedings. 

After the fall of Charleston, which took place on 
the 1 8th of February, the steps of the auction block 
in the old slave mart of that city were sent to 
Boston witli other relics, to be exhibited at meet- 
ings held for the benefit of the freedmen. From 



342 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON 

these steps Garrisou spoke at the first of these meet- 
ings, on the 9th of March, eliciting wild applause 
and happy enthasiasm. That he should have re- 
joiced to mount the ste]3S and to speak surrounded 
by evidences that in America slavery was no more, 
was right and proper. Yet it may justly cause 
some pain that he trod on a captured Confederate 
flag, used to carpet the symbolic rostrum. \Yith his 
feelings on the subjects of war and slavery and 
secession, and in the mood of the time, this, too, 
was natural ; but a delicate mind would grieve to 
be guilty of contumeliously affronting a conquered 
and gallant foe. That flag had been carried in one 
of the most calamitously ill-judged of wars and in 
one of the most perverse of causes, but it had been 
followed by brave and noble men, who, however 
misguided, gave life itself as a proof of their de- 
votion to this, in their eyes, sacred symbol. 

The season of festivities reached its culmination 
in an invitation to be present as a guest of the 
government at the ceremony of raising the Stars 
and Stripes on Fort Sumter on April 14th, the 
fourth anniversary of the surrender. The voyage 
was entranciugly calm and beautiful, and the com- 
pany carefully selected and congenial, — all, so Gar- 
rison tells us, of one mind as to reconstruction and 
nobody stiff in his manners. George Thompson oc- 
cupied a stateroom with Garrison. On the day of 
the celebration, the vessels in Charleston harbor 
were dressed with flaunting flags, the artillery of 
the forts and war-ships thundered their most solemn 
salutes, and the banner of the Union floated every- 



THE IREEPKESSIJJLE CONFLICT 343 

where except over Sumter. Mujor-General Eobert 
Anderson, who as major had hauled down the flag, 
had the privilege of raising again the same shot- 
smitten banner. Henry Ward Eeecher delivered 
the principal address. On the fifteenth, the morn- 
ing on which Lincoln died, a party including Gar- 
rison visited the tomb of Calhoun. As they stood 
beside the burial-place of him who had been brain 
and nerve to the institution which Garrison had 
spent his life in combating, Garrison laid his hand 
on the tombstone, and said : ''Down into a deeper 
grave than this slavery has gone, and for it there is 
no resurrection. ' ' 

To Garrison the freedmen were of more interest 
than anything else to be seen during his journey ; 
and he took every opportunity to address them, 
rejoicing with them and rousing them to great 
excitement. The most impressive of the festival 
meetings of the blacks was held in Charleston. In 
the course of it a negro, Samuel Dickerson by name, 
bringing forward his little daughters, who carried 
bouquets, expressed to Garrison and his coadjutors 
the thanks of a multitude of negroes whose families 
had been restored to them and whose family life 
had been made safe and honorable, so it was hoped, 
by the instrumentality of the lovers of freedom. 
Garrison, accepting the flowers, replied with much 
feeling. Among other things he said : '' God is my 
witness ! — I have faithfully tried, in the face of the 
fiercest opposition and under the most depressing 
circumstances, to make your cause my cause ; my 
wife and children your wives and children, subject 



344 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

to the same outrage and degradation j myself on tlie 
same auction-block to be sold to the highest 
bidder. . . . While God gives me reason and 
strength, I shall demand for you everything I claim 
for the whitest of the white in this country." ^ Later 
on the same day, when he visited his son in camp, he 
for the first time saw some negro field -hands, aud 
was overwhelmed at the spectacle of their simple 
and good-natured but brutally unintelligent faces, 
and their forms, many of them clad in sacks, with 
bare anus and legs. For their condition he naturally 
but uijj Listly held slavery wholly answerable. How 
dread the responsibility then and now resting upou 
state and nation for these poor creatures, so near to 
ancestors violently snatched from barbarism or 
savagery, who in degrading the whole life of the 
South and through it of the country, have brought 
the punishment for their wrongs upon those who 
held them in bondage. As the Arago, the little 
vessel on which Beecher, Garrison, and Thompson 
embarked, intending to go on to Florida, lay at 
the wharf ready to depart, throngs of freedmen 
brought flowers in heaps as gifts, with little del- 
icacies, and another festival was held on the wharf, 
Dickerson again kneeling there and holding the 
flag over the heads of his children as the vessel 
steamed down the harbor. 

The news of Lincoln's death, received at Beau- 
fort, broke oft" the journey at once; and the 
company turned back, changed quickly to another 
vessel on the way, and went on with such haste that 
^Life, Vol. IV, p. 148. 



THE lEKEPKESSlBLE CONFLICT 345 

there was only an hour's coal left in the bunkers 
when the steamer reached Is'^ew York. Intense as 
was the grief and horror of the whole nation in the 
days succeeding Lincoln's assassination, there can 
have been no deeper gloom anywhere than in that 
ship's company, who had set out in such joy and 
were now sailing back appalled by what they 
had heardj beyond the reach of information, and 
tortured by all kinds of anxiety, not only as to the 
strength of the government, but as to the whole 
condition of the country. From New Yoik they 
silently dispersed to their homes, relieved of their 
worst fears, but still overcome with sadness. 

In the anti-slavery societies the question involved 
in the discussions as to the propriety of supporting 
Lincoln had come up this year in a more intense 
form than before. Garrison was convinced that the 
nation was really converted to a detestation of 
slavery. He was also sure that the North in the 
reconstruction of the Southern states would insist 
on ''guarantees for the protection of the freed- 
men" ; that is, would give them the suffrage, 
protect them by force of arms, and withhold from 
those who had led in the government of the Con- 
federate states opportunities to regain control of 
the state governments. No doubt his journeys and 
his acquaintance with politicians had some influ- 
ence in making him feel greater confidence in ''the 
world's people." The more radical Abolitionists 
could not share his faith. Led by Phillips, they 
insisted that the situation still required activity on 
the part of the anti -slavery societies in support of 



346 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

negro suffrage, and assailed the political leaders of 
the day with uncompromising severity. At the 
Massachusetts meeting in January, Garrison de- 
clared his belief that the special work of the society 
was done, and proposed a resolution that it should 
dissolve upon the ratification of the Thirteenth 
Amendment. His resolution was laid upon the 
table, while the obloquy cast upon public men in the 
discussion so grieved and shocked him that he 
absented himself from the meeting during its later 
days. At th^ May meeting of the American 
Society Garrison introduced resolutions reaching to 
the heart of the question, to the effect that there 
was no longer any ground for Abolitionists to stand 
aloof from their countrymen, and that the society 
should close its existence with the meetiug then 
in session. Phillips called upon the members for 
renewed activity until the liberty of the negroes 
should be placed beyond peril, and in his speeches 
referred slightingly to the philanthropic agencies 
for the education and assistance of the freedmeu. 
He and others spoke as if discontinuing the society 
were tantamount to abandoning the negro, and as if 
proposing to do so were treachery to the cause of 
freedom. Garrison met the argument that the 
society was still needed for the defense of the free 
negroes by asserting that the society was founded 
as an anti-slavery society, and that all its activity 
on behalf of the free negro had been but inci- 
dental to its main object. As an abolition society 
it became absurd, now that slavery was abolished. 
With statesmanlike wisdom he concluded; ^'Itis 



THE lEEEPBESSIBLE CONFLICT 347 

ludicrous for us^ a mere handful of people with little 
means, with uo agents in the field, no longer 
separate, and swallowed up in the great ocean of 
popular feeling against slavery, to assume that we 
are of special importance, and that we ought not to 
dissolve our association, under such circumstances, 
lest the nation should go to ruin ! " ' 

By a vote of one hundred and eighty-one to forty- 
eight Garrison's resolutions were rejected, and the 
continuation of the society was determined upon. 
Even after Garrison's words, the nominating com- 
mittee brought in his name for the presidency. 
When he declined to serve, Phillips was chosen. 
The society adopted by a rising vote a warm 
tribute to Garrison, which he accepted with grate- 
ful words, and thus his connection with the 
American Anti-Slavery Society, which he had 
helped to form, into which he had breathed the 
breath of life, and of which he had been the 
constant inspirer and for twenty-two years the 
president, was brought to an end. This society 
had been the centre of the anti-slavery agitation of 
the country, the vehicle of light and heat on the 
subject, the creator of sentiment, the fly-wheel 
which kept the momentum of individual zeal from 
being lost and wasted. Its end was to Garrison's 
mind accomplished ; but as his sons suggest,' to 
many it was an end in itself. The excitement, the 
warmth of comradeship in the cause, the sense of 
superiority to a thoughtless world enticed some into 
delight with merely continuing the form. 

'Life, Vol. IV, p. 158. *i&»d., P- 162. 



348 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

From this time on to the close of the year, Garri- 
son had resting on his shoulders merely the contin- 
uation of the paper and the performance of his 
duties in connection with the Freedman's Aid 
Commission, a consolidation of the most important 
associations for the benefit of the freedmen, just 
brought about by the energj^ of J. M. McKim. 
For eight or ten Aveeks he enjoyed the unusual 
hapx)ine8s of beiug uninterruptedly at home with 
notliiiig but the regular sequence of his editorial 
duties to engage his attention. Then he was 
obliged to begin again a round of travel. One 
lecture tour was undertaken to replenish the almost 
empty treasury of the Liberator^ that he might carry 
out his promise to continue the paper to the end of 
the year. Traveling was torture to him because of 
his suffering from hoarseness and ophthalmia ; yet 
he had the satisfaction of making fifteen hundred 
dollars — more than his year's salary — in a single 
month. On this journey, the longest of all his 
journeys in the United States, he saw the Missis- 
sippi, at Quincy, 111. His friends, Charles K. 
Whipple, Edmund Quincy, and Samuel May, Jr., 
undertook the editorial supervision of the paper 
during his absence. 

On his return, early in December, he hoped for 
the few remaining weeks of the year to devote all 
his time to the Liberator^ but was summoned to 
New York and Philadelphia by imperative busi- 
ness. While he was engaged in the act of deliver- 
ing a lecture in the latter city, the final ratification 
of the Thirteenth Amendment was announced. 



THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 349 

Garrison instantly hastened home to get the procla- 
mation into the Liberator^ and to celebrate the 
official declaration of the victory of the principles 
to which he had given heart, hope, health, friends, 
money, his all for more than thirty-five years of his 
life. He wrote his valedictory editorial in such 
haste that the copy was taken from his desk a few 
lines at a time to be put in type. When all but the 
final paragraph had been set up and adjusted in the 
chase, he himself took up the composing-stick, 
finished the work, and set his take in the space left 
for it. The group about the table Avatched silently 
and gravely as the form was locked, and the last 
number of the Liberator^ bearing the date of Decem- 
ber 29, 1865, went to press. The type, just as it 
was set, is in the safe keeping of the Boston Public 
Library. 



CHAPTEE XIV 

LAST YEARS 

Though Garrison could calmly and even cheer- 
fully bring the Liberator to an end, his life, after he 
had bid farewell to this companion of thirty-five 
years, at first seemed empty ; and for some weeks 
he mechanically followed his established routine of 
visiting the office and clipping the exchanges day 
by day. But toward the end of January, 1866, he 
slipped on an icy pavement and fell heavily, almost 
paralyzing his right arm and shoulder for a time. 
In the middle of the year he fell again on the same 
side while running to catch a car— a habit of his, in 
conformity with his general practice of putting off 
small matters and sometimes great ones until the 
last minute. The result of the accident was a pain- 
ful injury, which prevented him from writing for 
the rest of the year and put an end to the project, 
with which he had dallied, of composing a history 
of abolition. His life passed for the time not un- 
pleasantly. The house in which he lived and to 
which he had removed from Dix Street, Boston, in 
August, 1864, stood in an agreeably retired situa- 
tion on Highland Street, Eoxbury. The street was 
twenty-five feet below, at the foot of the terraced 
grounds ; and from the upper windows the view 
swept out over the harbor and from the valley near 
at hand to the bold and noble contours of the en- 



LAST YEAES 351 

closing hills. A fine ledge of rocks near by gave the 
little estate of half an acre its name, — '' Kockledge." 
This latest homestead of the great Abolitionist is 
now, appropriately, the St. Monica Home for sick 
colored women and children. 

The fresh air, the quiet, and the i)rivacy were 
most beneficial to Garrison's health. He solaced 
his evenings with whist, which he played with a 
naive enthusiasm more delightful to a lover of his 
kind than to an expert in the game. He was able to 
give more time than ever to the care of his wife. 
His household was made glad, also, by the birth, 
on June 14, 186(3, of his first grandchild, Agnes, the 
daughter of his son William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., 
who had married Ellen Wright at Auburn, N. Y., 
September 14, 1864. Yet, in si)ite of his domestic 
happiness, he could not but feel anxious for the fu- 
ture. He had little in the way of worldly x">osses- 
sions, except the house in which he lived. He was 
in impaired health, perhaps permanently disabled, 
and was obliged to care for an invalid wife. At 
this anxious time, a number of men whose names 
form a roll of honor for themselves and for the re- 
cipieut of their bounty, subscribed to a fund raised 
as a testimonial of their appreciation of Garrison's 
services to the country and to the world. The sig- 
natures represented the whole North and West, 
from Maine to Oregon, and from Missouri to Min- 
nesota. They included names of men eminent in 
many callings, but especially the ''intellectuals'^ 
of America and England. The fund, which owed 
its success to the assiduity and energy of the Eev. 



362 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISOK 

Samuel May, Jr. , reached a total of over $30, 000. 
It was tendered to Garrison in 1868, and was ac- 
cepted by him with dignified and generous grati- 
tude for the spirit which prompted the gift. 

In 1867, Garrison was able to gratify a desire, 
cherished for some years, to visit England once 
more. His daughter had married Henry Villard, 
then a newspaper correspondent, in January, 1866. 
The Villards had gone abroad, taking with them 
Garrison's youngest son ; and Mr. Villard was em- 
ployed as correspondent from the French Exposi- 
tion. Garrison took a child's delight in the gay 
shops and beautiful scenes of Paris, and visited the 
Exposition again and again with unflagging eager- 
ness. In England he was at once fatigued and 
gratified by a multitude of addresses and i^ublic 
entertainments tendered him as a representative 
of the movement for freedom in America. By 
Englishmen liberty was more prized than union ; 
and Garrison as the leader in the cause of eman- 
cipation for its own sake was in the eyes of many 
the foremost American. A public breakfast given 
in London in his honor was made noteworthy by 
one of John Bright' s simplest and most beautiful 
speeches, and by the public acknowledgment of 
Earl Russell, best known to us as Lord John Russell, 
that as premier he had made the mistake in the 
earlier years of the war of misunderstanding the 
direction in which the struggle was tending. More 
impressive and more welcome still was an address 
from the working men of North Shields. These 
were representatives of that great body of British 



LAST YEAES 353 

craftsmen who, by their devotion to the cause of 
liberty when they were confronted with starvation, 
reached the loftiest moral level ever attained by 
such a body of meu. For they were not stimulated 
by i)roximity to the evil, or excited by conflict, or 
urged on by patriotism, or sustained by religious 
fervor, but afar and in quiet patiently suffered 
misery for themselves, their wives and little ones, 
in loyalty to the sublime idea of freedom. 

Yet more delightful to Garrison than any of these 
IDublic honors was meeting with old friends. Among 
them was Mazzini, Avhom Garrison warmly loved and 
deeply venerated. It was twenty-five years since 
they had met; and Mazzini' s noble face and form 
now bore the marks of thought and travail and im- 
prisonment. Garrison was shocked by his emaci- 
ated and broken appearance. Learning that Maz- 
zini' s health had been injured by excessive smoking, 
and that he was trying to make a gradual reduction 
in the number of the cigars which he daily con- 
sumed. Garrison besought him with friendly frank- 
ness and tenderness to "go in for immediate and 
unconditional emancipation." ''Nothing,'^ Garri- 
son writes, ' ' could be more respectful, more sweet, 
more gentle than the manner in which he received 
my entreaty." ' 

In August Garrison was present as a delegate at 
the meeting of the International Anti-Slavery Con- 
ference at Paris, lamenting that he could not un- 
derstand the Frencli and Spanish speakers, and 
declaring "his abiding faith in the feasibility of a 
, 1 Life, Vol. IV, p. 195. 



354 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

universal language, at some period or other.^' 
After the conference Garrison went on a tour 
through the western Alps and then down the 
Rhine. Richard D. Webb, who was his traveling 
companion for three weeks, gives an interesting im- 
pression of him at this time : '' He is the most de- 
lightful man I have ever known — magnanimous, 
generous, considerate, and as far as I can see, every 
way morally excellent. I can perceive that he has 
large faith, is very credulous, is not deeply read, 
and has little of the curiosity or thirst for knowl- 
edge which educated people are prone to. But, 
take him for all in all, I know no such other man." ^ 
Soon after his return to America, he was invited 
to write for the New York Independent. This bril- 
liant journal, conducted by orthodox Congregation- 
alists, had an evangelical trend, but was edited with 
broad liberality and not as a denominational organ. 
Though it had long supported the anti-slavery move- 
ment, it was opposed to all forms of '* come-outer- 
ism''; but with the abolition of slavery accom- 
plished, and with the new feeling of the North as to 
Southern conditions. Garrison was a welcome con- 
tributor. The articles were signed, and individu- 
ality was encouraged in the contributors, who made 
up a distinguished company. Among the clerical 
writers were Howard Crosby, Philip Schafif, Horace 
Bushnell, Washington Gladden, and Theodore L. 
Cuyler ; Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Susan Coolidge, 
and J. T. Trowbridge contributed vStories ; Thomas 
Wentworth Higginson and Charles Dudley Warner 
»Xi/e, Vol. IV, p. 232 n. 



LAST YEARS 356 

essays of a distinctly literary type ; Lucy Larcom 
aud ''H. H." verse; Charles KiDgsley and ''Pere 
Hyacintbe" foreign correspondence; and a great 
variety of less frequent contributors spiced the 
paper with occasional extremism, among them the 
Rev. 0. G. Finney and Garrison himself. Garrison 
accepted the invitation with pleasure, and wrote 
pretty frequently for five years, from 1868 to 1872, 
and intermittently for three years longer. 

The first subject which occupied his pen was 
the reconstruction of the Southern states. It will 
be remembered that, although Garrison would not 
join in condemning Lincoln when Phillips called on 
the anti- slavery societies to reprobate the Presi- 
dent's policy with reference to the readmission of 
tha seceded states, he still expressed disai)proval of 
any plan of reconstruction which did not recognize 
the negro as free and equal ; that is, as entitled to the 
suffrage and to federal protection in the exercise of 
it. No doubt he would have been a vigorous op- 
ponent of the presidential policy if Lincoln had 
lived to carry it out ; and what he would not have 
tolerated in Lincoln he abominated in Johnson. 
All of Johnson's obvious faults were peculiarly 
hateful to Garrison, — his self-assertion, his trucu- 
lence, his drinking habits ; — while his patriotism, 
hard sense, and executive force were not qualities 
which the reformer appreciated. As it happened. 
Garrison was in Washington visiting his daughter, 
Mrs. Yillard, on the anniversary of Washington's 
birthday, in 1866, when Johnson first violently de- 
nounced his congressional opponents in a public ad- 



356 WILLIAM LLOYD GAliKISON 

dress. To a man of Garrison's temi)er and ante- 
cedents, Johnson could be nothing but ''the recre- 
ant President," while of the gratification of ''seces- 
sionists and copperheads" over Johnson's speech 
he wrote : " I am sure the bottomless pit is equally 
jubilant." 

Garrison early uttered a warning against the giv- 
ing up of peace principles by the Abolitionists, 
which he believed would diminish the moral power 
of the abolition movement. Yet the congressional 
method of reconstruction, which he now advocated, 
involved the treatment of the Southern states 
as conquered, and the establishment in them, or in 
most of them, of negro rule by means of the military 
forces of the United States. It is incredible that 
without the experience of the war he himself, who 
had proclaimed that he had no weapons against the 
Southern slaveholders except the truth of God, who 
blamed Lovejoy and the free state settlers of Kan- 
sas and John Brown for taking up carnal weapons, 
should have sanctioned the control of the South 
by force of arms. The princij)les which led him 
to urge peaceful dismission of the Southern states 
before the war, it would seem, would have led 
him to believe that a naturally formed economic 
order alone could bring a stable government into ex- 
istence in them afterward. So bitter were his feel- 
ings that he supported the impeachment of Johnson, 
declaring that the mere words in which he spoke of 
Congress were of themselves sufticient to justify his 
removal from office. He was grievously disap- 
pointed when the impeachment proceedings failed, 



LAST YEARS 357 

and never forgave tlie seven senators who sacrificed 
their political future to their sense of justice and 
right. Senator Fessenden of Maine, in particular, 
stood high on his black list. 

Garrison later attacked Greeley's candidature for 
the Presidency against Grant, calling Greeley ''the 
worst of all counselors, the most unsteady of all 
leaders, the most pliant of all compromisers in times 
of great public emergency." In effect, Garrison 
was so strong in his support of the Kepublican 
party after the war that a misguided member of the 
Massachusetts legislature wrote to him in 1874, dur- 
ing the senatorial deadlock after the death of 
Charles Sumner, and asked whether Garrison would 
accept the senatorship. The reply was of course a 
decisive rejection of the project. 

In one respect Garrison's views were opposed to 
those of the Republican party of the time :— he was 
now a free trader, in the strictest sense and on the 
broadest principles. In 1869 he became a vice-presi - 
dent of the American Free Trade League and was 
active in the formation of a Revenue Reform League 
in Boston, — an organization in favor of a return to a 
specie standard of value, of the merit system in the 
civil service, and of a tariff for revenue only. 
Among the striking paragraphs in his speech on 
the occasion of the establishment of the Revenue 
Reform League, two are particularly noteworthy. 
Nowhere else is the faith of the political individual- 
ist as to governmental regulation of industrial con- 
ditions more dogmatically and clearly stated : 

"The cause of human liberty covers and includes 



368 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKRISOK 

all possible forms of hiiinau industry, and best de- 
termines how the productions thereof may be ex- 
changed at home and abroad to mutual advantage. 
Though never handling a tool, nor manufacturing a 
bale of cotton or wool, nor selling a yard of cloth or 
a pound of sugar, he is the most sagacious political 
economist who contends for the highest justice, the 
most far-reaching equality, a close adherence to 
natural laws, and the removal of all those restric- 
tions which foster national pride and selfishness. 
The mysteries of government are only the juggles 
of usurpers and demagogues. There is nothing in- 
tricate in freedom, free labor, free institutions, the 
law of interchange, the measure of reciprocity. It 
is the legerdemain of class legislation, disregarding 
the common interests of the people, that creates 
confusion, sophisticates the judgment, and dazzles 
to betray. The law of gravitation needs no legisla- 
tive props or safeguards to make its operation more 
effective or more beneficent. . . . 

'^It is to be supposed — other things being equal 
— that those whose lives are devoted to business 
affairs and financial matters will have a clearer 
perception of what concerns their interests than 
those whose pursuits are simply professional or 
philanthropic. Other things being equal, I say — 
that is a very important qualification ! Alas ! they 
are often most unequal, because of a profligate dis- 
regard of principle ; and then follow incongruity, 
entanglement, loss of vision, impaired judgment, 
desperate expedients, calamitous results. This was 
strikingly illustrated in the insane conduct of the 



LAST YEAES 359 

business men of the nation, of all classes, in burning 
incense and servilely bowing the knee to the South- 
ern Moloch for a period of threescore years and 
ten, animated by the belief that it was a paying 
investment ! What came of it, we have all had 
bitter occasion to know." ' 

Garrison declared ' ' protection of American 
labor" to mean ' ^restriction and taxation of that 
labor." He avowed himself " a radical free trader, 
even to the extent of desiring the abolition of all 
custom-houses, as now constituted, throughout the 
world." — " Is it not ludicrous to read what piteous 
calls are made for the protection of the strong 
against the weak, of the intelligent against the 
ignorant, of the well-fed against the half-starving, 
of our free republican nation against the effete 
governments of the Old World, in all that relates 
to the welfare of the people? . . . Must we 
guard our ports against the free importation of 
hemp, iron, broadcloth, silk, coal, etc., etc., as 
though it were a question of quarantine for the 
smallpox or the Asiatic cholera 1 " ^ 

The same individualistic philosophy dictated 
Garrison's reply to appeals for aid in industrial 
reform. He saw many evils in the social constitu- 
tion, but no radical wrong, like slavery, in the in- 
dustrial regime. The "toiling masses," whom a 
correspondent summoned him to aid, were in his 
view but the American people, who could complain 
of nothing in the organization of society for which 
they were not themselves responsible, and which 

^Life, Vol. IV, pp. 262, 263. UUd., p. 265. 



360 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

their collective will could not easily correct. '' You 
express the couviction that the present relation of 
capital to labor is ' hastening the nation to its ruin,' 
and that if some remedy is not applied, it is difficult 
to see 'how a bloody straggle is to be prevented.' 
I entertain no such fears. Our danger lies in 
sensual indulgence, in a licentious ijerversion of 
liberty, in the prevalence of intemperance, and in 
whatever tends to the demoralization of the people." ^ 
There were no aspects of government and social 
order which interested him deeply unless he could 
view them as moi-al questions. Hence he gave his 
whole strength to opposing the military spirit prev- 
alent after the war. He joined others who ab- 
horred militarism in seeking to keep compulsory 
drill out of the Massachusetts public schools. His 
sons ^ tell how a young Japanese, who had been sent 
by his government to this country to prepare for 
the military i^rofession, and who had been struck by 
Charles Sumner's address on ''The True Grandeur 
of Nations," was so desirous of listening to Garri- 
son's words on the subject that he was brought to 
Garrison's house by two young women, fellow 
students with the Japanese youth at Boston Uni- 
versity. The young man went away convinced, 
returned to Japan, informed his government that 
he must renounce the career of a soldier, was im- 
prisoned, and when released was placed in a 
petty position with scanty pay, but remained 
steadfast. 

Garrison supported prohibition on principle, as 
^Life, Vol. IV, p. 249. "" Rid., p. 247. 



LAST YEARS 361 

lie had attacked slavery. A prohibitory law, 
passed in Jlassachiisetts in 1852, was repealed in 
1867, was reenacted in 1869, and was the football 
of politics for several years afterward until its 
repeal in 1875. In 1871 a local option law was 
passed in the state. Garrison's contention through- 
out was that the traffic in intoxicatiug liquors is so 
essentially sinful that the state has no right to 
sanction it by license or to attempt to regulate it 
as something merely liable to abuse, but if prohi- 
bition is impossible and ineffective, is bound simply 
to let it alone as an unclean thing. His vote for no- 
license at the local option election in 1871 was the 
only vote he had cast since that for Amasa Walker 
in 1834. At the same time he opposed the establish- 
ment of a Prohibition party. He believed that 
making a purely moral question a strictly party 
issue is likely to weaken the moral sentiment by 
adulterating it with the secondary considerations 
necessary to win votes ; and as he did not see 
enthusiasm enough in the Republican and Demo- 
cratic parties to make them effective antagonists of 
each other, he did not believe that anything would 
be gained by multiplying issues. 

His views on woman suffrage were equally un- 
compromising. The suffrage was in his opinion a 
natural right, and by withholding it the states were 
guilty of taxation without representation. After 
the war he gave more energy to this question than 
to any other. The exposure of a winter journey to 
a suffrage convention in Vermont early in 1870 is 
believed by his sons to have been the cause of the 



362 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON 

illness from which dates his continuous decline until 
his death nine years later. 

Certain instances of the regulation of prostitution 
by law were attacked by him. on the same ground 
as the legalizing of slavery and the licensing of the 
liquor traffic ; namely, that the law has no right to 
give its sanction by regulation to that '^ from which 
Hows more of evil than good," much less to that 
which is itself a sin. In 1871 he welcomed the 
agitation then begun in England by Mrs. Josephine 
E. Butler against the Contagious Diseases Acts, 
measures intended for the license and regulation 
of prostitution in garrison towns in Great Britain. 
In 1873 he supported Dr. W. G. Eliot in his assault 
on the licensing of i)rostitution in St. Louis. At 
intervals during the years of arduous struggle be- 
fore either of these movements reached success, he 
wrote and spoke several times in favor of them. 

Many other reforms engaged his attention. He 
supported Mr. Bergh and the Society for the Pre- 
vention of Cruelty to Animals, and opposed corporal 
punishment in the public schools. He attacked 
American atrocities in the Indian wars. He urged 
the adoption of phonotypic printing as an aid in the 
teaching of reading. He sustained the contention of 
Eoman Catholics that reading the Bible in the pub- 
lic schools was an infringement of religious freedom. 
He suggested that pulpit dulness would be over- 
come if the clergy would give up preaching from 
texts and devote their attention to the moral ques- 
tions of their own daJ^ In general he assailed the 
faults of his time rather than showed the better 



LAST YEARS 363 

way. He coudemned interuatioual boat races, and 
by implication all atliletic contests involving in- 
tense strain and expeuse, and magnifying athletic 
achievements out of proportion to intellectual ones. 
He reprobated the snobbishness of American tour- 
ists abroad. Many of his articles were corrections 
of what he regarded as '^i fruitful source of public 
demoralization . . . the indiscriminate lauda- 
tion bestowed after their removal by death upon 
num who have occupied high and responsible 
stations,'' ^ without due regard to the moral qualities 
of their actions. To praise unworthy men was in 
his view to sin against youth. In this spirit he 
criticized Henry Wilson^ s History of the Rise and Fall 
of the Slave Power for its indiscriminate commenda- 
tion of reformers, especially of "sectarians." 
Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, that man of pictur- 
esque, many-sided cleverness, — composer, poet, 
historian, architect, essayist, lawyer, ecclesiastic, 
pedagogue, ritualist, and defender of slavery ; 
George Peabody, the philanthropist, who spoke too 
favorably of the Southern whites and never showed 
sympathy for the Southern blacks ; Millard Fill- 
more, the President who signed the Fugitive Slave 
Law and who after his death was eulogized by the 
legislature of Massachusetts, were in the company 
of those against whose posthumous glory he raised 
a protest. The same temper led him to oppose the 
appeal for subscriptions in aid of the college of 
which General Robert E. Lee became president. 
Garrison would not trust the ''rebel leader" or 
^ Independent, April 23, 1874. 



364 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

approve his white man's college. He attacked the 
John Qiiincy Adams of the day as degenerate from 
his great ancestor in connecting himself with the 
Democratic party and taking the stump in South 
Carolina. Everywhere Garrison strove to be an 
antidote to American comj^lacency. In an article 
published in the number of the Indejiendent follow- 
ing July 4th of the centennial year, when the air 
was full of rejoicing, when the country looked back 
in wonder over its i>rogress and glory, he cited the 
shames of our history : — the slaveholding of those 
who founded the nation ; the continuance of the 
slaveholding spirit prompting white men of all 
regions and parties to deal iniquitously with the 
negroes; the injustice of the war with Mexico, of 
the Indian policy, of refusing i)olitical rights to 
women. It is noteworth^^ that he says nothing of 
the disgraces of Grant's administration, just then 
become public. — ''Before God, is this a time for 
special jubilation? If we rejoice at ail, let it be 
with contrite hearts that we have not been utterly 
consumed." ^ 

On the other hand, as Garrison advanced in 
years, he again and again uttered words of i)raise 
and farewell to those who like him had engaged in 
the struggle against slavery, and who had gone to 
the grave before him. He wrote for the press 
appreciations of such public men as Gerrit Smith, 
Henry Wilson, and Charles Sumner, in which he 
strove to characterize them with scrupulous ac- 
curacy, and to estimate their contribution to the 
* Independent^ July 6, 1876. 



LAST YEARS 366 

weal of mankind with exactness as judged from the 
loftiest moral standpoint, and yet to commend them 
with warmth for all the good they had wrought. 
At the funerals of many Abolitionists he spoke in 
the same spirit at once of strict justice and of heart- 
felt gratitude for their service as members of that 
small minority who by their virtue save the state 
against its will. 

Among those at whose funeral Garrison spoke 
was Henry 0. Wright, who died near Providence, 
Rhode Island, in August, 1870. He had no home, 
and upon Garrison and Wendell Phillips fell the 
responsibility of choosing a place of burial for him. 
A curious and very circumstantial narrative tells how 
a healing medium, whom Garrison consulted for his 
own illness, with no thoughts of Wright, was '^con- 
trolled" by Wright's spirit, who told Garrison of a 
single triangular burial lot marked by a tree in a 
particular part of a certain cemetery near Provi- 
dence, which would be satisfactory. The lot at first 
could not be found ; another medium at Providence 
was made the vehicle of a communication insisting 
that it was in the cemetery, and at last, apparently 
by accident, the lot was discovered just where it 
had been revealed to be.' 

So many funeral services was Garrison called 
on to perform that he may fairly be denominated, 
as his sons call him, ''minister at large of the 
anti-slavery host." In spite of his anti- clerical- 
ism, there was in the nature of the man a cer- 
tain type of ecclesiastic. His associates, his op- 

^ Life, Vol. IV, p. 253 n. 



366 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

poneuts, and his point of view during the most 
active part of his life were theologicah He judged 
all things from a lyriori moral standards, and was 
led on inevitably into the consideration of cases of 
conscience, and of the bases of morals and faith. 
His emotions, though they flowed in deep and 
narrow channels, were stronger than his powers of 
analysis. He was an exhorter ; and he had the 
sense of the dramatic and symbolic in conduct and 
speech which are essential parts of the successful 
clergyman's equipment. The pastoral office is so 
necessary to mankind, especially in giving fit forms 
to the public interest and sympathy at the crisis of 
death, that it is no wonder the *' come-outers," who 
were all unchurched, should have turned to Garri- 
son and Phillips as informal pastors. Thus it fell 
to Garrison to bid farewell to the devoted Qua- 
keress, Sarah Grimke, who left her Southern home 
and suffered the painful experiences of the platform 
in the days when a woman who appeared on it was 
regarded with horror ; to his gifted fellow lecturer, 
0. C. Burleigh ; and to many more of the laborers 
in the anti-slavery cause. 

His words beside their graves expressed implicit 
faith in a future reunion. He wrote to a friend : 
''Our old co-workers are fast disappearing from 
this earthly stage, and, in accordance with the laws 
of mortality, we must follow them at no distant 
day. How unspeakably pleasant it will be to greet 
them, and to l)e greeted by them, on the otlier side 
of the line ! The longer I live, the longer I desire 
to live, and the more I see the desirableness of living j 



LAST YEARS 367 

yet certainly not in this frail body, but just as it 
shall please the dear Father of us all. ^ It is sown 
a natural body ; it is raised a spiritual body. It is 
sown in corruption ; it is raised in incorruptiou. 
It is sown in dishonor ; it is raised in glory. It is 
sown in weakness ; it is raised in jDOwer.' AYliat a 
blessed exchange, and how magnificent !" ' 

On January 28, 1876, Mrs. Garrison died from 
the effects of a sudden and severe attack of pneu- 
monia. In Garrison's own enfeebled condition the 
strain of her illness and the shock of her death 
prostrated him so completely that he was not able 
to attend the funeral, and seemed likely to follow 
his wife to the grave in a few weeks. Though he 
was well enough to visit the Progressive Friends' 
meeting at Longwood, Pa., and the Centennial 
Exhibition in June, he was very infirm all the 
year. The winter was a trying one for him, and 
the loss, in May, 1877, of his daughter-in-law, Lucy 
McKim, the wife of his son Wendell Phillips 
Garrison and the daughter of his old friend and 
anti-slavery associate J. Miller McKim, shocked 
and weakened him. By the advice of his physician 
he went on a journey to England, where, though 
his condition forbade large formal assemblies in his 
honor, he was received with abundant and agree- 
able private hospitality. He spoke in public on a 
few occasions, the most important being the annual 
conference of the associations for the repeal of the 
Contagious Diseases Acts. In his address he con- 
gratulated the members of the associations that for 

1 Life, Vol. IV, p. 252. 



368 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISOK 

their souls' welfare they had taken hold of a 
righteous but undeservedly unpopular cause. '' As 
for me, I think I should not know how to take part 
in a popular movement — it would seem so weak- 
ening, so enervating. Everybody is there, and 
there is nothing to be done excepting to shout." 
In England Garrison took his last farewell of his 
more than brother, George Thompson, now old, poor, 
and paralytic. The excitement of Garrison's visit 
restored to Thompson for a time his full power of 
articulate speech, which had been much impaired, 
and the two men, who had striven for humanity and 
were now near the grave, spent a time of sad happi- 
ness in each other's company. As the moment of 
parting came, the more afflicted sobbed on Garri- 
son's shoulder, and then sat wistfully watching him 
disappear from his sight. The English journey 
brought Garrison a gleam of renewed energy and 
spirit, though no healing of his profound malady. 
During the brief remainder of Garrison's life 
after his return, his mind was still engaged with 
public questions. The end of reconstruction had 
come ; and when President Hayes announced his 
policy of withdrawing the United States troops 
from the support of the wretched pretenses of 
governments in the few states in which military 
forces were still retained. Garrison wrote with old- 
time intensity against the withdrawal. The idea of 
reestablishing the tyranny of the rebel and the afore- 
time slaveholder over the unfortunate freedmen 
shocked him. No other question seemed to him 
worthy of being made a political issue, as he wrote 



LAST YEAES 369 

to Wendell Phillips, who had joined the Green- 
back-Labor party and was supporting General 
Benjamin F. Butler. *' While the freedmen at the 
South are, on the ' Mississippi plan ' and by the 

* shotgun policy,^ deprived of their rights as Ameri- 
can citizens, and no protection is extended them 
by the Federal government, . . . the old anti- 
slavery issue is still before the country." Hence, 
as he expressly declared, the '' 'bloody shirt,' " an 

* *■ awful symbol (yet but faintly expressive) of the 
gory tragedies that have been performed at the 
sacrifice of a hecatomb of loyal white and colored 
victims," ^ must be used to rally the Eepublican 
party once more. 

In the very last year of his life Garrison was 
moved to write a protest against the action of 
James G. Blaine in supporting the bill to restrict 
Chinese immigration. Garrison ardently defended 
the character of the Chinese from the aspersions 
cast upon it. But the main contention of his argu- 
ment is that the United States ought to remain 
freely open to all immigration. He inveighed 
against the spirit of caste and the folly of Anglo- 
Saxon self-conceit. The majority of Chinese were 
worthy and valuable immigrants ; and if some 
were not, it was our duty to raise them to our 
level. 

To the end of his life, he kept up his interest in 
woman suffrage, and did all in his power with the 
same will as of old for every reform that seemed to 
him worthy. His last published utterances dealt 

1 Life, Vol. IV, pp. 293, 295. 



370 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON 

with the exodus of some thousands of negroes from 
Louisiana and Mississippi in search of better condi- 
tions than at home. Garrison constituted himself 
treasurer of a relief fund for these unfortunate be- 
ings, and wrote a letter to the Boston Traveler^ urg- 
ing that the exodus was but the symptom of a grave 
disease, and that the millions of negroes still abid- 
ing in the states of the South should be reinstated 
and protected in their rights, political and indus- 
trial, by the power of the national government. 

Yielding to the persuasions of his daughter, Mrs. 
Villard, who visited him in the spring of 1879, and 
saw how ill he was, he returned with her to Kew 
York to be cared for at her home. The disease, an 
affection of the kidneys, had gone too far for cure. 
On May 10th he took to his bed, from which he did 
not rise again. Two weeks later his children gath- 
ered about him and in his last hours of conscious- 
ness sang to him his favorite hymns, — "Amster- 
dam,'' "Christmas," "Lenox." Though he could 
not speak, he took part by beating the time with 
foot and hand. He died on May 24, 1879. Fu- 
neral services, at which Wendell Phillips made an 
impressive and affectionate address, were held in the 
church of the First Keligious Society in Eoxbury, 
and he was buried in Forest Hills Cemetery. His 
body lies in a fair spot in this beautiful resting- 
place of the dead, now a part of the city where he 
lived and labored. His grave, covered by a stone 
eloquent in its simplicity, is a place of pilgrimage, 
and his memory an inspiration. 



CHAPTEE XV 

THE SUMMING UP — THE OUTCOME 

William Lloyd Garrison peacefully closed liis 
stirring career a little more than thirty years ago. 
Before he died he doubtless saw that the final issue 
of some things for which he had striven was not 
likely to prove satisfactory according to the stand- 
ards he had set. Equal suffrage for men and 
women is the only cause that he advocated which 
will probably in the course of time have complete 
realization. It is pertinent in these closing pages 
to contrast the ideas he cherished with the results 
actually achieved. 

If the foregoing chapters have hit the truth, the 
history of the rise and fall of slavery in this country 
is not with any completeness unfolded in a narrative 
of the greatest agitator against it. We may go a 
little further and say, not without hazard of criti- 
cism, that the story of Garrison is by no means the 
story of the anti-slavery movement, — even the filial 
biographers admit this by implication. The doings 
of this one remarkable man might, in fact, be al- 
most lifted bodily from the annals of the general 
endeavor and then considered with reasonable ful- 
ness and adequacy. His is an exceptional instance 
of isolated though not unrelated performance, of 
which his own resolve to keep aloof from the en- 



372 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISOK 

tangliDg alliaiices of everyday i)olitics is the ex- 
plauation. The course of the Garrisoniaus was 
parallel to, seldom convergent with the current 
down which the American people are accustomed 
to move toward an end. Their one-sidedness gave 
them an astonishing energy and enabled them to 
attain greater results than could have been looked 
for from more complacent and tolerant characters. 
They had not the impartial type of mind which can 
say with Tacitus, "if/Vr/. Galbctj Otho, Vitellius nee 
beneficio, nee injuria eogniti.''^ 

But Garrison certainly builded better than he 
knew when he stopped the Liberator and resigned 
the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety. His own course was run when he was able 
to say, not irreverently, on April 15, 1865, over the 
grave of the mighty Calhoun: ''Down unto a 
deeper grave than this slavery has gone, and for it 
there is no resurrection." ""He was an important 
instrument toward the achievement of an impera- 
tively necessary result. It was his desire to have 
slavery abolished in a far different way, and he was 
sincere when he said, '' I had no idea that I should 
live to see death and hell secede." He lived to see 
emancipation proclaimed, and three amendments, 
bearing on the results which must ensue from such 
emancipation, added to the Constitution which he 
had publicly burned a decade earlier ; but he was 
not responsible for the partial failure of the country 
and the government to adjust themselves to condi- 
tions forced upon them by a destructive war, hate- 
ful in principle to Garrison as perhaps to no other, 



THE SUMMING UP— THE OUTCOME 373 

aud tolerable to him only because it seemed to bim 
providentially imposed. 

The negro at last was no longer a slave ; racially 
he nov;^ became an Afro- American and by enact- 
ment a man. The old wrong and misery under 
protection of the state were over. Henceforth the 
freedman must work out his own salvation, with 
such aid as a generous government, better education, 
and gradually improving standards of life could af- 
ford him. Much and often as Garrison found rea- 
son to criticize the treatment of the negro from the 
end of the war to the hour of his death, he was not 
committed to the care-taking of this still unfortu- 
nate race. With a heart yet tender for their plight 
and their depressed i^ositiou, his logical perception 
must have told him that the freedmen were some- 
what in the same case as the so-called laboring 
classes on whom he seems to have spent so little 
sympathy. The working man and the lately en- 
franchised were under a domain of law that could 
and would protect them in their rights and privileges 
up to a certain point. Beyond that point they must 
tread unaided the path of opportunity, narrow or 
wide as it might be ; not even William Lloyd Gar- 
rison, powerful to arraign the imperfections of a 
Constitution and a concrete national sin, could im- 
pose upon a reluctant country humanitarian the- 
ories of social toleration and of the universal broth- 
erhood of man. 

The negro to-day is a really neglected quantity as 
compared with our attitude toward him half a cen- 
tury ago. While many praiseworthy efforts are 



374 AYILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

directed toward bia improvement, and while en- 
lightened men in the South as well as in the Xorth 
are devising plans to hearten him, he no longer, as 
a race, absorbs our interest or our attention. Uncle 
Tom has become merely Sambo, doomed apparently 
to the humbler occupations and not welcomed in or 
encouraged to rise to high x^lanes of life. He has 
been freed at a fabulous price ; he is a citizen un- 
der the law ; now let him, if he can, take the hard 
chances of life like the rest of us— such is the gen- 
eral attitude toward a melancholy but not neces- 
sarily hopeless situation. 

One influence exerted by Garrison has lasted to 
the present day, although it is equally possible to 
overestimate or underestimate this influence which 
indirectly affected those who may never have heard 
his name. He preached no new thing, for all that 
he said was good Scripture long before he appeared ; 
but, aided by other radicals, as religious in conduct 
as they were infidel in creed, he dealt a really ter- 
rible blow to ecclesiasticism in this country. The 
point is not whether the churches themselves were 
a '' brotherhood of thieves" as Stephen Foster 
called them, or the ''bulwarks of American slav- 
ery" as Birney said they were, but whether they 
were to be dominated by a reactionary clergy and 
its supporters. In this matter Garrison had a po- 
tent influence, but no such influence is ever capable 
of precise analysis. It is not enough to say that 
the trend of American religious life has followed 
the lines marked out by Garrison ; — that the Sab- 
bath is now regarded in this country with less rev- 



THE SUMMING UP— THE OUTCOME 375 

erence than in his day, and is observed more for its 
value than for its sanctity ; that the revelation of 
the Divine is looked for within the Bible, and that 
the Bible as a whole is not regarded as a mechanic- 
ally perfect revelation j that the ministry in most 
evangelical churches is not a sacrosanct body ; that 
the Church concerns itself with questions of the day ; 
that more stress is laid on the Christian's duty to 
his neighbor than on his duty to God. Before any 
important part in this general movement can be as- 
cribed to Garrison, evidence must be given that he 
was in some sense a leader and not merely the serv- 
ant of an influence so powerful as to carry him 
along with the trend of the age. 

If any leadership was exercised by Garrison, it 
was a moral and not an intellectual leadership. 
Garrison originated no new ideas in any field, but 
proclaimed ideas suggested to him by others with 
an energy and a tenacity ; in other words, with a 
power of will, that compelled attention. Thus, 
though Garrison received the suggestion of immedi- 
ate emancipation from the Eev. George Bourne 
(1816), the Eev. James Duncan (1824), and perhaps 
Elizabeth Heyrick, the English Quakeress (1825), 
yet his declaration of the doctrine made an epoch in 
the history of the anti-slavery movement, because 
it became the rallying-point for a body of support- 
ers, and because it was the platform of a campaign. 
Likewise the Eev. James Boyle, J. H. Noyes, and 
H. C. Wright preached their own heresies with less 
force than Garrison, though he was in theological 
matters but their pupil. It was the Garrisonian 



376 WILLIAM LLOYD GAERISON 

Abolitionists who first, decidedly, powerfully, and 
with the force of organized numbers assailed Sab- 
batarianism, ecclesiasticism, belief in the plenary 
inspiration of the Bible, and indifference to social 
abuses in the church of their day ; and Garrison as 
their head was the recognized leader of this as of 
the extreme abolition movement itself. The ortho- 
dox press chose the Abolitionists as the chief repre- 
sentatives of contemporary apostasy, and named 
Garrison the '' Prince of New England Infidelity." 
Further, the influence of the Abolitionists upon 
the Transcendentalists must be recognized. The 
ideas of Garrisonianism, expanded and etherealized, 
may be traced in the assertions of individualism of 
spirit and socialism of duty in the pages of the 
Transcendentalists. No doubt it is too much to say 
with Mr. John J. Chapman that Garrison made 
Emerson possible; yet even this exaggeration is 
useful in correcting the tendency to attribute over- 
much to a German origin the spirit of Transcen- 
dentalism in America. However much the form of 
Transcendentalism may have been affected by a 
congenial German philosophical terminology, its 
sources and spirit are American. Its roots are in 
American life, in the manifold efforts to break 
through convention in American society, efforts 
which in their last analysis were but one aspect of 
the American consciousness that the United States 
was a vast laboratory of social experiment, a " New 
World '^ of the spirit as well as of the geographical 
atlas, in which a chosen people were to establish 
* ' Time' s noblest empi re. ' ' Garrison's speaking out 



THE SUMMIl^G UP— THE OUTCOME 377 

was the most prominent New England expression 
of the ferment which was most active in little circles 
of radicals and reformers in regions farther west. 
Now the mark of Transcendentalism upon our 
American religious life is broad and deep ; its in- 
fluence directly upon various denominations, even 
upon Eoman Catholics, is to be perceived in the 
anti-dogmatism, the individualism, and the social 
morality of the church of our day. On the whole, 
then, that Garrison's influence was but one among 
many forces must be conceded ; that in some sort 
the American religious world would in time have 
moved in the direction which it has taken is, per- 
haps, undeniable. All that can fairly be said is 
that the change took the form it did take, and came 
when it did come, in no small part because of Gar- 
rison's mind and will. 

If the ''gods delight in gods" as Emerson says 
they do, then, for ordinary mortals, it requires 
more than a touch of radicalism in one's nature, 
a revolt at the usual order of thiugs, and perhaps 
somewhat of the divine fire, to appreciate the Garri- 
sons of any age. Even Mr. F. B. Sanborn, still as 
vigorous and unflinching to attack all forms of evil 
as he was sixty years ago, says of the Emancipator, 
whom he did not meet until 1852, that ''his 
methods were illogical in the extreme," though he 
found him "lovable and gentle" when not in a 
vituperative mood. "His private life was in 
absolute contrast with his public career." In spite 
of these qualifications, Mr. Sanborn thinks that 
Garrison did hold the question of slavery "con- 



378 WILLIAM LLOYD GABEISON 

stantly before the public by bis persistency.'' 
Another radical, but yet a milder one, believed 
that ^Hhe purity of Garrison's character, the lov- 
able sweetness of his spirit, and his unsparing 
devotion to the welfare of others, made it impossible 
for the most orthodox of his friends to turn him 
over to Satan, though they were obliged to call him 
infidel.'" 

Mr. Archibald H. Grimke, one of the biog- 
raphers of Garrison, and of the race which owes so 
much to his memory, thought his subject '^strangely 
deficient in a sense of proportion." The lack is 
well illustrated by Garrison's strongly expressed 
sentiments in regard to the anti-Chinese attitude of 
the country just before his death. He pronounced, 
with his lifelong vehemence, this attitude to be 
** narrow, conceited, selfish, anti-human, anti- 
Christian." With the sort of political economy or 
political science that works out its conclusions by 
means of the calculus, he had no sympathy, and we 
may fairly say that he had no comprehension of 
its method or import. Not the action of economic 
laws or the pressure of the ethnic struggle, but the 
application of larger and it must be said vaguer 
principles of universal justice, of absolute ethics, 
of the unity of the human race, had a real sig- 
nificance to him. For ' ' that general middlingness, ' ' 
— George Eliot's phrase — which accepts things as 
they are and tries to make the best of them, he had 
no sympathy. In fact he came rather close to 
Nietzsche's ''Nie pozwalam — I refuse to assent." 

It would be unjust to an estimate of Garrison's 



THE SUMMING UP— THE OUTCOME 379 

reputation as a public man not to reckon in the 
opinions of those who knew him on the intimate 
and personal side, and who honored the ^^ purity of 
his life and the generous beauty of his character ' ' 
— to use the words of Eichard Webb. But the brief 
tributes of two friends of widely differing type must 
suffice, for they express well enough the opinions of 
those who came to understand and venerate his 
personality as it was revealed to them. The ad- 
verse opinions have been fairly disclosed in the 
course of the present work. After summering and 
wintering him for many years, Samuel May, Jr., 
himself a bringer to the cause of the rich gifts of 
''integrity, humanity, and culture — inherited and 
personal," was able to say: ''He possesses one of 
the most gentle, affectionate, kindly natures I ever 
met with. He never tires of meeting and relieving, 
with words and deed, the oft-recurring cases of 
suffering and perplexity. That Avhich would dis- 
turb and ruffle another, he meets with calmness and 
patience ; and it is a fact, that as one and au other 
become personally acquainted with him, they never 
fail to express their surprise that he is so unlike 
what he has been represented to be, and what 
indeed, from an occasional i)erusal of his writings 
(coupled with preconceived ideas), they had sup- 
posed him to be." 

In more accentuated strain, George Thompson, 
more aggressive, less gentle in word and manner 
than May, speaks, after a test of twenty years, of 
his friend Garrison as "a man who, though de- 
nounced by the state as a traitor, reviled by the 



380 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 

Church as a heretic, and anathematized by the 
slaveholding couspiracy of Auierica as an in- 
cendiary, is the truest patriot, one of the most 
devout imitators of the life of Christ, and one of the 
best friends of the human race. If I were asked to 
name the man of the present age, who has accom- 
plished the greatest moral work of the age, and 
from whose labors the mightiest issues would flow, I 
should unhesitatingly pronounce the name of 
William Lloyd Garrison." 

Within two inches of six feet tall, dressed with 
scrupulous neatness, the happy possessor of good 
teeth, and a clear complexion surmounted by a 
fine forehead, Garrison was a personable man to the 
day of his death. He was unmistakable and did 
not look like any one of a thousand others. He 
must have had a fair measure of good health, in 
spite of numerous ailments, and an uncommon 
measure of strength and energy, else he could not 
have endured the various and prolonged strains put 
upon him. Possibly he hoarded his resources by 
his habit of procrastination : what is put off until 
to-morrow is often never done, and no one the 
worse for the delay. 

He was a modern in his love of outdoors and 
took pleasure in some of the less strenuous sports. 
He was equal to a game of whist and not above 
playing croquet. His life in his home was ideally 
beautiful, for he was a lover to his wife and a just, 
considerate and open-hearted friend and companion 
to his children. The tax put upon his hospitable 
and companionable nature was severe to one of 



THE SUMMING UP— THE OUTCOME 381 

most restricted means, but it was borne by himself 
and his household with buoyant cheerfulness. His 
was no double nature, yet it is easy to think that 
there were two Garrisons : one radiant with kindli- 
ness and good-nature among his friends and in his 
family ; the other terrible and forbidding when he 
arraigned with equal invective Church and State, 
slaveholder and pewholder, merchant prince and 
miserable catcher of fugitive blacks for their apos- 
tasy toward the laws of God and the principles 
which should govern man. 

Of his use of the English language it seems to be 
conceded that it was plain, vigorous and impress- 
ive. He employed a phraseology based upon a 
close knowledge of the Scriptures ; the denunciation 
of the prophets of woe was perhaps oftener on his 
lips than were the consoling promises of the new 
dispensation. He was not eloquent as Phillips 
was, nor an orator, elegant and learned, after the 
pattern of such contemporaries as Charles Sumner, 
Edward Everett and Eobert C. Winthrop. He 
certainly had . not the dynamic, irresistible elo- 
quence of a Webster. He was sober, though not 
without many expressions of humor, and his pres- 
entation of argument required close attention. To 
the careless or the young he was probably hard to 
follow with complete absorption. But his earnest- 
ness did for the cause he pleaded what perhaps a 
tongue of fire could not — it made his hearers believe 
first in him, and then by natural sequence in his 
reasonings. 

He wrote poetry, especially sonnets, of far more 



382 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON 

than au ordinary merit. To one child certainly, 
tlie late W. P. Garrison, this gift descended in a 
choice way. In 1843 Garrison published a small 
volume entitled Sonnets and Other Foems. Not only 
did his verses in the making prove a consolation 
to him, often during hours of anxiety and trouble, 
but they unquestionably were an inspiration to his 
cause. Usually correct in form and exalted in 
feeling, they still have interest. Now and then he 
would fall below his own standard, as when he put 
forth the rather afflictive verses beginning, 

* ' I am an Abolitionist, 
I glory in the name." 

But even such productions had their uses for the 
era in which they were written. 

Measured by the highest standards of life, many 
of the ethical activities of the present day are of 
secondary value, since they address themselves to 
material improvements rather than to a release 
from thraldom in spiritual affairs. To Garrison's 
mind the struggle to free the slave immediately and 
without parley was, more than anything else, a re- 
ligious combat in which all the energies of the soul 
might have play. As a humanitarian he could but 
smile approvingly on most of the various efforts of 
this day to better the lives of men, women and 
children. But he could not, nor may we, regard as 
of the highest importance the earnest, often frenzied 
zeal for all the well-meant expressions of humanity's 
determination not to wax fat and let its moral tissues 
degenerate. There are alreadj^ signs in the heavens 



THE SUMMING UP— THE OUTCOME 383 

that mere prosperity, liowever vast, is not enough. 
Great wealth and great j)Ower having come to us by 
virtue of our ability and force, the question is facing 
us squarely, what to do with them, and how to 
control them within prudent bounds. To modify 
the working conditions of what has happily been 
called our controllable environment, without dis- 
turbing the constitutional and judicial adjustment 
of national life — these are problems which seem to 
offer to a great people an undertaking worthy of 
its best endeavor. For such a cause there must be 
and perhaps already are leaders capable of carrying 
so grave a struggle to a successful issue. In such a 
contest between a people and an internal evil 
menacing its existence, there must be statesmen, 
great jurists capable of discerning the pitfalls pre- 
pared for hastily contrived laws. But there will be 
a place for such as Garrison, uncomplex, never de- 
viating, never tempted by the allurements of ambi- 
tion, to inspire and warn. When the issue is made 
plain and the people begin to look for a sign — there 
need be little fear but that out of the crucible, molten 
with the fierce combustion of political and social 
ideals, will come forth a clear spiritual product; 
others as fearless and single-hearted as Garrison 
and his little cohort will appear. In 1865 Garrison 
said : *' To-day, it is popular to be president of 
the American Anti-Slavery Society. Hence, my 
connection with it terminates here and now, both 
as a member and as its presiding officer." And 
that must be the spirit of all who wage impersonal 
war with spiritual and not lethal weapons. It may 



384 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKIilSON 

be doubted, however, whether just such an oppor- 
tunity as his will ever present itself again in this 
country. In his day there was homogeneity ; ap- 
peal might be made to fellow citizens who could 
interpret his arguments in his own language, even 
when they could not agree with them. He spoke 
to his own flesh and blood and was not obliged to 
be over-conciliatory to differences of race and re- 
ligion. To-day an extremist would find it hard not 
to offend beyond forgiveness if he assailed men and 
measures in Garrison's way. The older freedom 
has largely gone. Perhaps it is just as well, yet a 
certain effectiveness has been lost when a fighter 
for ideals must consider overmuch whether he is 
wounding racial or religious sensibilities. 

A foremost characteristic of Garrison's make-up 
was a well-seasoned hopefulness. The clouds hung 
heavy over his cause for twenty years before the 
war broke out, and were dark enough to chasten 
even his intrepid soul. He saw compromise and 
policy continuously triumphing ; his own immediate 
organization dismembered by faction— only his little 
handful of followers really left to him at times ; 
but, at heart, he really never was discouraged, 
certainly never to the surrender -point of effort. 
Much that he strove for has since his death seemed 
to come to naught. His own peculiar courage is 
needed to-day among those who cherish similar 
ideals of American life and the possibilities con- 
tained therein. How strongly the hopefulness and 
manly strength of the great Abolitionist is de- 
manded was well expressed by his youngest son on 



THE SUMMING UP -THE OUTCOME 385 

the occasion of the celebration, in 1905, by the col- 
ored citizens of Boston of the one hundredth anni- 
versary of Garrison's birth. It epitomizes, as fol- 
lows, the aspirations and the misgivings, but never 
the despair of American political idealism : 

'' When my father j^assed away, the reactionary 
movement against the exercise of the elective fran- 
chise by the Southern freedmen had already set in, 
and his last i^ublished utterance was a protest 
against the proscription which had driven hundreds 
of them from Mississippi and Louisiana to Kansas. 
Since then the fraudulent tissue ballots have been 
succeeded by no less fraudulent enactments which 
have practically disfranchised the colored popula- 
tion of the South, and if he were to return to-day 
he would find not only the Fifteenth Amendment 
to the Constitution nullified, but the Thirteenth 
Amendment, which abolished slavery, defied by the 
wretches who attempted a system of peonage. He 
would find negroes excluded from juries, from all 
town, city and state governing bodies, denied legal 
intermarriage with whites, restricted to negro 
galleries in the theatres and negro cars on the 
trains, subjected to excessive penalties for violations 
of law, and in many ways still victims of that cruel 
and unrelenting race prejudice which he assailed 
from the outset of his warfare seventy-five years 
ago. He would find women denied their full polit- 
ical rights in all but four states of the Union, and 
the Chinese, whose claim to equal treatment with 
all other immigrants to our shores he vindicated 
with his latest breath, still excluded as outcasts. 



386 WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 

He would view witb amazemeut the spectacle of 
the United States seizing distant islands, slaughter- 
ing their people by tens of thousands, and establish- 
ing colonial government ^ without the consent of 
the governed.^ He would be saddened by the mad 
increase of naval armaments, and the increasing 
disposition to interfere in, and arbitrarily regulate, 
the affairs of feebler countries. He would deplore 
the lowering of civic ideals, the growth of the 
commercial spirit, which have resulted in the wide- 
spread business and political corruption now being 
uncovered in our country. But would he be dis- 
heartened or hopeless as to the future 1 Assuredly 
not!" 

Of him, then, fearless to wage unending war 
against concrete evil, yet spurning the coarse 
weapons of physical offense and defense, one may 
say with Emerson that he 

" Unanned, faced danger with a heart of trust." 



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INDEX 



Abolition Intelligencer, the, 6l. 

Abolitionist, the, 94. 

Adams, Brooks, on Massachu- 
setts theocracy, 156. 

Adams, John, 29. 

Adams, John Quincy, Garrison 
supports for presidency, 63; 
respected, not liked, by Gar- 
rison, 64 ; view of Abolition- 
ists, 131, 168 ; on retention of 
abolition mail-matter, 131 ; 
on Channing's essay, 153 ; 
unfavorable comment on re- 
formers, 169; suggests eman- 
cipation under war power, 
322. 

Adams, John Quincy, the 
younger, 364. 

Adams, Nehemiah, his amusing 
conservatism, 156. 

Adams, Samuel, 167. 

Adams, William, 197. 

Alcott, A. Bronson, 79, 224. 

Allen, E. W., Garrison ap- 
prenticed to, 52 ; financial 
backer of Free Press, 56. 

American and Foreign Anti- 
Slavery Society, " New Or- 
ganization," 193. 

American Anti-Slavery Society, 
formation urged, 91 ; organi- 
zation, I lo-i 15 ; anti-political, 
154; "Clerical Appeal," 160; 
executive committee restrains 
agents, 160; Garrison disap- 
proves restriction, 162 ; value 
of, 169; difficulty with Mas- 
sachusetts Society, 185, 187; 
Garrison controls, 188; 



schism, 191-196; funds low, 
201 ; dependence on Garri- 
sonians, 226; meetings not 
representative, 240; disunion 
policy, 242, 246, 249, 250, 
254; Rynders mob, 278-285 ; 
cannot meet in New Yoik, 
287; not disturbed (1853), 
291 ; twentieth anniversary, 
292; small attendance during 
war, 329 ; factions unite, 330 ; 
contest as to dissolution, 346. 

American Colonization Society, 
39» 71. 93.95' "2, 123. 

American Convention for Pro- 
moting the Abolition of Sla- 
very, 40, 73. 

American Free-Trade League, 
Garrison a vice-president, 

357- 

American Peace Society, con- 
servative, 177, 178. 

American System, see Tariff. 

American Union for the Relief 
and Improvement of the 
Colored Race, anti-Garrison, 
127. 

Ames, Fisher, 54. 

Anderson, Robert, 343. 

Andrew, J. A., 341. 

Animals, Society for the Pre- 
vention of Cruelty to, 362. 

Anti-Chinese, see Chinese im- 
migration. 

Anti-slavery, few controversies 
of fact, 9 ; /• history has no 
gaps," 41 ; pre-Gari'isonian, 
43 ; Garrison's stand vital, 
45 ; L. W. Bacon on useless- 



392 



INDEX 



ness of Garrisonian, 69 ; boy- 
cott of slave-made goods, 70, 
199; strategy of anti-slaveiy 
violence, 84 ; agitation in- 
creases hardness of negroes' 
lot, 187; violence tends 
toward war, 1 13 ; Eastern and 
Western types differ, 125, 180, 
195, 196; Garrison's domina- 
tion most complete in New 
England, 184, 185; separale- 
ness of Garrisonian, 371, 372; 
and politics, 154, 181, 190, 
201, 207, 292. 

Anti-Slavery Conference (Lon- 
don), 353. 

Anti-Slavery Convention of 
American Women, 175. 

Anti-slavery societies, between 
1815 and 1830, 38; before 
1 83 1, 40; rapid establishment 
of, 64, 147; importance, 169; 
" New Organization," anti- 
Garrison movement, 191, 198, 
224, 244; "congregational" 
polity, 196; decline during 
war, 328 ; reconciliation of 
factions, 330 ; divisions as to 
dissolution, 335. 

Appleton, Nathaniel, 26, 

Asbury, Francis, 33. 

Ashurst, W. H., favors admit- 
ting women delegates, 198. 

Atchison, D. R., 308, 

Austin, J. T., 166. 

Bacon, L,, anti-Garrison, 69 ; 
Garrison distrusts, 77. 

Bacon, L. W., 69, 77, 106. 

Ballou, A,, establishes Hope- 
dale community, 225, 

Baptist Church, 28, 59, 62, 92. 

Bartlett, Ezekiel, cares for Gar- 
rison in childhood, 51. 

Bascom, John, 328. 

Bates, Hamlett, attack on Gar- 
rison, 238. 



Beach, T. P., 236. 

Beckwith, G. C, 177. 

Bcecher, Catherine, opposes 
lecturing of women, 158. 

Beecher, Edward, 218. 

Bcecher, H. W., on Rankin and 
abolition, 44; begins to speak 
at abolition meetings, 292 ; 
supports force in Kansas, 
308 ; speaks at Ft. Sumter 
celebration, 343. 

Beecher, Lyman, conservative 
toward abolition, 79 ; at Lane 
Seminary, 125 ; on the Sab- 
bath, 151. 

Bell and Everett, 318. 

Benezet, Anthony, 20, 22, 27, 

31- 

Bennett, J. G., incites pro- 
Southern violence, 278-280. 

Bennett, T. D., shelters Garri- 
son in need, 58. 

Benson, George, father-in-law 
of Garrison, lOO, 117, 118, 

130. 137- 
Benson, G. W., brother-in-law 

of Garrison, 116, 225. 

Benson, Helen, see Garrison, 
Helen [Benson]. 

Benson, H, E., brother-in-law 
of Garrison, 116. 

Benson, Mary, sister-in-law of 
Garrison, 243. 

Benton, T. L., 271. 

Bergh, Henry, founder of the 
S. P. C. A., 362. 

Bible, authority discussed, 204 ; 
Garrison's reverence for, 213 ; 
in public schools, 362 ; Gar- 
rison on the use of texts from, 
362 ; current American view 
of inspiration, 375 ; Garrison's 
use of, 381. 

Birney, J. G., leaves Coloniza- 
tion Society, 125; offended 
by Garrison's response to 
Clerical Appeal, 160; nomi- 



INDEX 



393 



nated by Liberty party, 191 ; 
American Anti-Slavery Soci- 
ety disapproves course, 194 ; 
on the church, 374 ; men- 
tioned, 168. 

Bishop, J. P., attacks Garrison, 
238. 

Black laws, in Northern states, 
1850, 278. 

Blaine, J. G., anti-Chinese 
policy, 369. 

Bloomfield, Joseph, 31. 

Boston Female Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, 133, 135. 

Boudinot, Elias, 31. 

Bourne, George, suggests im- 
mediate emancipation, 375. 

Bowditch, H. I., 175. 

Bovvring, John, favors admit- 
ting women delegates, 198. 

Boyle, James, teaches Garrison 
heterodoxy, 375. 

Breckenridge, John, contempt 
of Garrison, 123. 

Bright, John, on George Thomp- 
son, 121 ; speech in honor of 
Garrison, 352. 

British and Foreign Anti-Slavery 
Society, 157. 

Brook Farm, 172, 204, 225. 

Brown, B. Gratz, 330. 

Brown, D. P., at dedication of 
Pennsylvania Hall, 173. 

Brown, John, 17, 163; at Har- 
per's Ferry, 313; Garrison's 
view of, 313, 314, 356; Bos- 
ton meeting in memory of 
broken up, 317. 

Brown, J. L., condemned to 
death, 261. 

Brown, Nehemiah, carries cargo 
of slaves, 75. 

Brownson, Orestes, 169. 

Bryce, James, 140. 

Buchanan, James, 310, 319. 

Buffum, Arnold, first president 
of New England Anti-Slavery 



Society, 92, 93 ; at organiza- 
tion American Anti-Slavery 
Society, 1 1 1 ; opposes disun- 
ion resolutions, 250. 

Bunyan, John, 75, 137. 

Burleigh, C. C, with Garrison 
before Boston mob, 135 ; aids 
Garrison on Liberator , 149 ; a 
less extreme Garrisonian, 
227 ; appearance and char- 
acter, 230 ; butt of Rynders 
mob, 285 ; funeral, 366. 

Burling, William, 27. 

Burns, Anthony, attempt to res- 
cue, 305, 310; order remand- 
ing burnt by Garrison, 307. 

Burr, Aaron, 91. 

Bushnell, Horace, 354. 

Butler, B. F., 369. 

Butler, Mrs. Josephine E., agi- 
tates against Contagious Dis- 
eases Act, 362. 

Buxton, T. F., 106, 199. 

Byron, Lady, 198. 

Calhoun, J, C, interprets Con- 
stitution as Garrison does, 
242 ; Garrison at tomb, 343, 
372; mentioned, 45. 

Cameron, Simon, and enlist- 
ment of negroes, 331. 

Capital punishment, opposed by 
Garrison, 89. 

Capron, E. L., at organization 
American Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, III. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 152. 

Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 

141. 

Channing, W. E., his " Essay 
on Slavery," 142-144; mag- 
nanimity, 150; at Chardon 
Street Convention, 204 ; men- 
tioned, 165. 

Channing, W. H,, 204. 

Chapman, J. J., essay on Emer- 
son, 220-221 ; on Garrison 



394 



INDEX 



and Transcendentalism, 

376. 

Chapman, Maria W., her cour- 
age, 135; on meeting of Gar- 
rison and Channing, 143 ; ad- 
dress at dedication of Penn- 
sylvania Hall, 174; at schism 
of American Anti-Slavery 
Society, 193 ; delegate to 
World's Convention, 197 ; as- 
sists in editing Liberator, 
249; mentioned, 44, 179. 

Chardon Street Convention, dis- 
cusses Sabbath and ministry, 
202-204 ; discusses church, 
214; No-organization in, 224. 

Chase, S. P., 245, 265. 

Chatham, Earl of, 59. 

Cheever, Ci. B., 126. 

Cherokee Indians, contest with 
Georgia, 90, 

Child, D. L., employs Garrison, 
59 ; at formation of New 
England Anti-Slavery Society, 
92 ; opposes disunion resolu- 
tions, 250. 

Child, Lydia M., wife of D. L. 
Child, 92 ; her anti-slavery 
writings, 142; on committee 
of American Anti-Slavery 
Society, 193 ; editor Stand- 
ard, 195 ; delegate to\Yorkrs 
Convention, 197. 

Chinese immigration, Garrison 
opposed to restriction, 369, 
378 ; exclusion still continues, 

^385- 
Church, Garrison feels the su- 

pineness of, 77 ; Garrison's 
conflict with, 81 ; the church 
and reform, 128; conservative 
tendencies manifested, 129, 
147, 235 ; ecclesiasticism in 
Massachusetts, 156; "Cler- 
ical Appeals," 1 58, 159: op- 
poses women's activity, 176; 
authority discussed, 202 ; Gar- 



r i s o n ' s anti-ecclesiasticism , 
208-211, 213, 223, 226, 227, 
232, 296 ; anti-ecclesiastical 
resolutions of Wendell Phil- 
lips, 250; church in Ohio more 
radical than in the East, 265 ; 
influence of Garrisonianism 
on church in America, 376. 

Civil service reform, 37, 357. 

Civil War, see War, Civil. 

Clarkson, Thomas, 102, 

Clay, C. M., 291, 

Clay, Henry, 76, 77, 190. 

Clergy, Garrison's severity 
toward, 27, 212; opposed to 
women delegates, 188, 198 ; 
authority of, 202, 213; Gar- 
rison opposed to as an order, 
296 ; Garrison suggests im- 
provements in preaching, 
362 ; present American feel- 
ing as to, 374. 

Cleveland, Grover, 37. 

Cofiin, Joshua, recording secre- 
tary New England Anti- 
Slavery Society, 93 ; at or- 
ganization of American Anti- 
Slavery Society, iii; ineffi- 
cient canvass for Liberator, 
119. 

Coke, Thomas, his anti-slavery 
boldness, 32-33. 

Coles, Edward, saves Illinois to 
free-soil, 42. 

Collier, William, total absti- 
nence editor, 59 

Collins, J. A., agent Massachu- 
setts Anti-Slavery Society in 
England, 202 ; on attacks on 
Garrison, 213; accounts as- 
sailed, 238. 

Colonization, Stiles and Hop- 
kins lean to, 30 ; Garrison 
supports, 64, 66; L. Bacon's 
support of, 69 ; Lundy carries 
slaves to Hayti, 70 ; Garri- 
son prefers Hayti to Africa, 



INDEX 



395 



7 1 ; attacked in Walker's 
*• Appeal," 73 ; renounced by 
Garrison, 8o; Garrison's 
" Thoughts on Colonization," 
89» 95 > Garrison attacks 
colonization idea in England, 
I02, io6; colonization sug- 
gested by Lincoln, 324 ; 
mentioned, 127 ; see Amer- 
ican Colonization Society. 
Colored People of the United 

States, Convention of, 91. 
Colver, Nathaniel, anti-Garri- 
sonian activity, 185, 202, 205, 
213; Garrison attacks, 204. 
Commons, J. H., on American 

land laws, 226. 
Communities, see Brook Farm ; 
Hopedale ; Northampton ; 
Noyes, J. H. 
Compromise of 1850, 276, 
Congregational Church (Ortho- 
dox) 30, 66-67, 79, 156. 
Connecticut Abolition Society, 

in Revolution, 30. 
Constitution of the United 
States, Garrison reverences, 
88; Garrison regards as a 
pro-slavery compact, 242 ; 
free-soil interpretation, 245, 
253, 267 ; Garrison burns, 
306 ; Republican party faith- 
ful to pro-slavery agree- 
ment in, 317; see Thirteenth 
amendment ; Fourteenth and 
Fifteenth amendments ; Dis- 
union policy. 
Contagious Diseases Act, 362, 

367- 
Coolidge, Susan, 354. 

Courier, the, Boston, 59. 

Cousin, Victor, 172. 

Cox, A. L., 115. 

Cox, S. H., 115. 

Cradle of Liberty, the, aboli- 
tionist paper, 187. 
Cranch, C. P., 204. 



Crandall, Prudence, mob vio- 
lence against, 99-101, 122. 

Cresson, Edward, agent Coloni- 
zation Society, 102, 106. 

Cropper, James, English cor- 
respondent of Genius, 71; 
opposes Colonization Society, 
102 ; mentioned, 106, 108. 

Crosby, Howard, 354. 

Crow, J. F., editor Abolition In- 
telligencer, 61. 

Gushing, Caleb, 54, 58. 

Cutts, J. Smith, see Smith, J. 
Cutts. 

Cuyler, T. L., 354. 

Darwin, Charles, 72. 
Debt, imprisonment for, 89. 
Democratic party, 63, 64, 189, 

201, 256, 317, 361, 364. 
Denison, C. W., will not serve 

on committee with a woman, 

193- 
Dickens, Charles, " Martin 

Chuzzlewit " alluded to, 109 ; 

American sensitiveness to 

comment, 122, 140. 

Dickerson, Samuel, freedman, 

343- 
Dickinson, John, early opponent 

of slavery, 30. 

District of Columbia, Abolition 
in, before 1830, 39, 62, 64 ; 
gradual abolition proposed, 
65 ; a strategic point in poli- 
tics, 127, 147, 149; renewed 
petitions, 168, 276; demand 
made subject of political 
pledge, 181 ; Lincoln's vote 
on, 317. 

Disunion policy, announced by 
Garrison, 239 ; abohtionists 
divide on, 241-245, 253; 
ground of mob violence, 
279; Garrison burns Consti- 
tution, 307 ; Garrison main- 
tains policy against Repub- 



396 



INDEX 



licans, 309 ; disunion conven- 
tion proposed, 311 ; Garrison 
thinks secession opens way to, 

318. 

Dole, Ebenezer, aids Garrison 
financially, 76. 

Douglas, S. A., 304, 

Douglass, Frederick, becomes 
an anti-slavery lecturer, 232- 
234; in Scotland, 261; in 
Ohio, 266, 268, 269 ; New 
York Globe incites violence 
against, 279 ; at Rynders 
mob, 283 ; will not join J. 
Brown, 314; at anti-slavery 
love-feast, 330. 

Drake, Sir Francis, and slave- 
trade, 24. 

Duncan, James, 375. 

Dwight, Timothy, 31, 87. 



Earle, Thomas, 191. 

Edwards, Jonathan, Sr., does 
not condemn slavery, 31. 

Edwards, Jonathan, Jr., preach- 
es against slavery, 30. 

Eliot, C. W., 175. 

Eliot, George, 378. 

Eliot, John, 24. 

Eliot, S. A., represses riot in 
Boston, 175. 

Eliot, W. G., opposes regulation 
of prostitution, 362. 

Elizabeth, Queen, 23. 

Emancipation, gradual, 27, 31, 
32, 37, 61, 64, 68, 82, 115, 
324-326, 330; early petition 
for in Virginia, 2>Z 5 imme- 
diate, 35, 82, 375 ; com- 
pensated, 72, 114; Repub- 
lican party does not propose, 
317 ; Adams's suggestion of 
under war power, 322; Gar- 
rison urges on Lincoln, 322- 
327; West Indian, 102, 106, 
173. 262. 



Emancipation Proclamation, 
326, 329, 330, 339. 

Emancipation Society (Lon- 
don), 262. 

Etnancipator, the (editor, E. 
Embree), 61 ; Eviancipator^ 
the (editor, J. Leavitt), 
160, 162, 194, 247. 

Embree, Elihu, 61. 

Emerson, R. W., a successful 
individualist, 17; J. Q. 
Adams on, 169 ; on Chardon 
Street Convention, 203; J. J. 
Chapman on, 220, 221, 376; 
on parliamentary routine, 
224 ; on Webster's 7th of 
March speech, 277 ; on Gar- 
rison, 386. 

Evarts, Jeremiah, 22. 

Evarts, W. M., 22. 

Everett, Edward, not at anti- 
abolition meeting, 131 ; judg- 
ment of slavery, 148; oratory 
of, 381 ; see Bell and Everett. 



Farniiam, Captain, and wife, 
protect Garrison's mother, 51. 

Federal party, 54, 55, 88. 

Fessenden, Samuel, leaves 
Colonization Society, 96. 

Fessenden, W, P., Garrison's 
bitterness against, 356. 

Fillmore, Millard, 363. 

Finney, C. G., Anti-Slavery 
Society organized in his 
chapel, 108 ; in Ohio, 265 ; 
at Oberlin, 269 ; contributes 
to Indepeiiden t, 355. 

Fisher, Miers, 31. 

Fiske, John, 122. 

P'itch, Charles, signer of *' Cler- 
ical Appeal," 162. 

Follen, Charles, disapproves 
Garrison's violence, 119; at 
legislative hearing, 144 ; life, 
144 ti. ; mentioned, 275. 



INDEX 



397 



Folsom, Abby, at Chardon 
Street Convention, 204. 

Foster, Abby [Kelley], address 
at Pennsylvania Hall, 174; 
appointment on committee 
precipitates schism, 193 ; dele- 
gate to World's Convention, 
197 ; anti-clerical resolutions, 
227 ; appearance and char- 
acter, 229, 232 ; leader in 
disunion movement, 242 ; 
lectures against Liberty party, 
245, 268, 292; opposes Lin- 
coln's plan of reconstruction, 

337- 

Foster, S. S,, his methods, 227, 
228, 23 1 , 232 ; lectures against 
Liberty party, 245, 267, 268, 
292 ; opposes Lincoln, 337 ; 
the church " a brotherhood of 
thieves," 374. 

Fourier, F. M. C, 172. 

Fourteenth and Fifteenth 
amendments, 372, 385. 

Fowler Bros., phrenologists, 
examine Garrison, 152. 

Franklin, Benjamin, opposition 
to slavery, 30 ; first president 
Pennsylvania Society for Pro- 
moting the Abolition of Sla- 
very, 40; early career and 
Garrison's, 53, 54 ; other re- 
semblances to Garrison, 75, 
105 ; mentioned, 20, 23. 

Free Church of Scotland, its 
" tainted money," 260-263. 

Free-Masonry opposed by Gar- 
rison, 89. 

Free Press, the, Newburyport, 
Garrison edits, 56, 58. 

Free soil doctrines, early in- 
stances of, 43 ; progress after 
Mexican War, 272; in Kansas, 
308. 

Free-Soil party, 273, 289. 

Freedmen, 329, 343, 348, 368- 

370- 



Fremont, J. C, order emanci- 
pating slaves, 322, 327 ; nom- 
inated for President against 
^ Lincoln, 337. 

French, J. R., son-in-law of 
N. P. Rogers, 257. 

Friends, anti-slavery record, 17; 
colonial eftbrts of, 28 ; in- 
fluence later, 37 ; in early 
abolition societies, 40 ; emi- 
grate to Indiana to escape 
slavery, 42 ; English, 107 ; in 
American Society, 1 10 ; Gar- 
rison a Progressive Friend, 
208, 367. 

Friends of Christian Union, 202. 

Friends of Universal Reform, 
202. 

Fry, Elizabeth, 199. 

Fugitive Slave Law, copy of 
burned by Garrison, 306 ; re- 
pealed, 340. 

Fugitive slaves, 272, 276, 2S6, 
287, 363 ; case of Burns, 305. 

Furness, W. H., 282. 

Gales and Seaton, publish 
threats against Garrison, 85. 

Gannett, E. S., anti-Garrison- 
ian, 79, 177. 

Garrison, Abijah, father of Gar- 
rison, 46-50. 

Garrison, Agnes, daughter of 
W, L, Garrison, Jr., 351. 

Garrison, C. F., son of Garrison, 
birth, 246 ; death, 275. 

Garrison, Elizabeth, sister of 
Garrison, 55. 

Garrison, Elizabeth, daughter of 
Garrison, 274. 

Garrison, Ellen [Wright], mar- 
ries W. L. Garrison, Jr., 351. 

Garrison, F. J., son of Garrison, 
biographer of father, 50; 
birth, 275 ; address at centen- 
nial of Garrison's birth, 385. 

Garrison, Frances Maria 



398 



INDEX 



[Lloyd], Garrison's mother, 

47753.55. "7- 

Garrison, G. T., son of Garri- 
son, 332. 

Garrison, Helen [Benson], wife 
of Garrison, marriage, 116, 
117; household anxieties, 
235 ; illness, 246 ; injury to 
wrist, 248 ; dislikes spiritual- 
ism, 301 ; stricken with par- 
alysis, 333; character, 334; 
death, 367. 

Garrison, Helen Frances, see 
Villard, Helen [Garrison]. 

Garrison, James, brother of 
Garrison, 50, 52, 244. 

Garrison, Joseph, paternal 
grandfather of Garrison, 46, 

47: 

Garrison, Lucy [McKim], 
wife of W, P. Garrison, 367. 

Garrison, \V. P., son of Garri- 
son, birth, 199 ; editor Na- 
tion, 199 n. ; his verse, 382. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, ca- 
reer, 17-28 ; sows seed of 
war, 40; importance of his 
decisive stand, 45 ; ancestry, 
46, 47 ; childish years, 48 ; 
apprenticeships, 52; typo- 
graphical skill, 53, 57, 349 ; 
resemblance of career to 
Franklin's, 53, 54 ; con- 
tributes to Newburyport 
Herald, 55 ; in debating so- 
ciety, 56 ; editor Free Press ^ 
56 ; his literary style, 57, 
381 ; goes to Boston, 58; 
editor National Philanthro- 
pist, 59 ; meets Benjamin 
Lundy, 60, 62 ; edits Ben- 
nington, Vt., Journal of the 
Times, 63 ; edits Genius 
of Universal Emancipation, 
66 ; speaks in Park Street 
Church, 66-68 ; declares 
slavery a national sin, 68 ; 



promulgates doctrine of im- 
mediatism, 70 ; advocates 
multitude of reforms, 72 ; on 
" Walker's Appeal," 74 ; 
fined and imprisoned for li- 
beling Francis Todd, 74-76 ; 
plans to issue paper in Wash- 
ington, 77 ; speaks in Boston 
against colonization, 79 ; es- 
tablishes Liberator, 81 ; 
threatened with personal vio- 
lence by vSoutherners, 85, 
86 ; reverences Constitution, 
88 ; universal reformer, 90 ; 
begins to be a national 
leader, 91 ; his " Thoughts 
on African Colonization," 
94-97 ; encourages Miss 
Crandall in teaching ne- 
gresses, 99-101 ; solicits funds 
in England for manual labor 
school, 102-108; in danger 
of mob in Boston, 109 ; at 
organization of American 
Anti- Slavery Society, ill; 
secretary of foreign corre- 
spondence, American Anti- 
Slavery Society, 1 15 ; marries 
Helen Benson, 116; settles 
in Roxbury, 117; financial 
distresses, 118, 139, 249, 
316, 351 ; severity of lan- 
guage and power to irritate, 
1 19-123, 141, 150, 160, 161, 
181-183, 227; in danger of 
mobbing, 124; votes for 
Amasa Walker, 127 ; mobbed 
in Boston, 133-139; judg- 
ment of Channing's essay, 
142-144 ; notified to give up 
Higginson pew, 144 ; phren- 
ological examination, 152; 
opposes organizing abolition- 
ist party, 154; answers 
•' Clerical Appeal," 158 ; his 
desire to dominate, 161 ; on 
death of Lovejoy, 165 ; rela- 



INDEX 



399 



tions with J. Q. Adams, i68 ; 
his relation to the ferment of 
his time, 170-173 ; address 
at dedication of Pennsyl- 
vania Hall, 173 ; on woman 
question, 176; active at 
Peace Convention, 177 ; on 
editorial committee of non- 
resistant paper, 179 ; his 
methods, 181- 184; holds 
control in New England, not 
in the West, 184 ; overthrows 
plan to crush Liber-ator, 185, 
186; establishes Cradle of 
Liberty (weekly), and 
Monthly Offering, 187 ; 
holds control in abolition so- 
cieties, 191-194; sent as 
delegate to World's Conven- 
tion, 195 ; voyage, 196, 197 ; 
bolts because of exclusion of 
women, 198; makes notable 
acquaintances, 198, 199; 
visits Scotland and Ireland, 
200 ; denounces theati-es, 218 ; 
non-resistance ideas, 218; 
no-government ideas, 219, 
223 ; his individualism, 220 ; 
his service to freedom of 
thought in the United States, 
221 ; opposes No-organiza- 
tion, 224 ; activity in lectur- 
ing, 226 ; his oratory, 230 ; 
on F. Douglass's Cape Cod 
speech, 233; excursion to 
White Mountains, 234 ; alien- 
ation of Knapp alienated 
from, 237 ; disunion pro- 
gramme, 239, 242 ; conducts 
funeral of brother, James, 
245 ; delivers lectures in New 
England and in western New 
York, 244, 245 ; calls Consti- 
tution " a covenant with death 
and an agreement with hell," 
246 ; method of presiding, 
247 J editorial negligence, 



249 ; his disunion resolu- 
tions adopted by American 
Anti-Slavery Society, 249; his 
anti-slavery papers and Low- 
ell's, 252; on Liberty party 
interpretation of the Consti- 
tution, 253 ; disunion ideas, 
255 ; aids C. T, Torrey in 
imprisonment, 256; es- 
trangement from N. P. 
Rogers, 257 ; favorable re- 
ception in Massachusetts, 
259 ; C. Sumner on his ora- 
tory, 260 ; agitates against 
Free Kirk, 260-263 ; relation 
between Garrison and Eng- 
lish abolitionists, 262 ; visits 
Ohio, 264-270; insight into 
effect of Texan annexation, 
271 ; on Wilmot Proviso, 
273 ; welcomes Free-Soil 
party, 273 ; at Northampton 
water-cure, 274 ; view of 
Compromise of 1850, 276, 
277 ; at Rynders mob, 279- 
285 ; celebrates twentieth an- 
niversary of Liberator, 287 ; 
fails to get Father Mathew 
or Kossuth to make a decla- 
ration, 287-289 ; on Uncle 
Toni's Cabin, 289; visits 
Cincinnati, 290; visits Mich- 
igan, 292 ; his interest in 
phrenology, in clairvoyance, 
301 ; his experiments in 
medicine, 275, 301-303; his 
interest in household inven- 
tions, 303 ; in phonography, 
304 ; his hope for a uni- 
versal language, 303, 353; 
fails to see importance of 
Nebraska bill, 305 ; burns 
Constitution, 306 ; on Kansas 
settlers, 309 ; view of Re- 
publican party, 309, 316, 
317; urges peaceful dissolu- 
tion, 310, 311, 318; antici- 



400 



INDEX 



pates Lincoln as to " a house 
divided against itself," 310; 
comments on John Brown, 
313, 314; prints " The New 
Reign of Terror," 315; crit- 
icism of Seward, 320, 321 ; 
view of Lincoln, 320-325 ; 
influences British sentiment 
in favor of the North, 327 ; on 
the draft, 327 ; addresses stu- 
dent society at Williams Col- 
lege, 328; kindly received 
in New York, 329 ; remi- 
niscences of Lundy, 330 ; be- 
havior to son, G. T. Garrison, 
who enters the army, 332 ; 
untrue legends of, 333 ; in 
minority in anti-slavery so- 
cieties on support of Lincoln, 
335 > views of reconstruction, 
336 ; on candidacy of Fre- 
mont, 337, 338 ; spectator at 
Republican convention, 338 ; 
visits Washington and meets 
Lincoln, 339, 340; gen- 
eral respect shown, 341 ; 
at celebration of the fall of 
Charleston, 341, 342; at 
tomb of Calhoun, 343 ; with- 
draws from anti-slavery so- 
cieties, 345-347 ; Western 
lecture tour, 348; valedictory 
in Liberator y 349 ; home in 
Roxbury, 350 ; testimonial 
fund, 351; visits Europe, 
352 ; character by R. D. 
Webb, 354 ; contributes to 
New York Independent^ 
354, 355 ; on reconstruction, 
355 ; on Andrew Johnson, 
356; supports Grant, 357; 
suggestion of senatorship, 
357 » supports many political 
and social reforms, 357, 360- 
362 ; an individualist as to 
industrial questions, 225, 
226, 359,^360; a general 



censor, 362-364 ; officiates at 
abolition funerals, 365, 366; 
loses wife, 367 ; visits Eng- 
land, 367, 368 ; farewell to 
George Thompson, 368 ; op- 
poses withdrawal of troops, 
368 ; opposes Blaine on 
Chinese immigration, 369 ; 
in favor of woman suffrage, 
369 ; starts relief fund for 
negroes leaving Louisiana 
and Mississippi, 370 ; last 
illness and death, 370 ; char- 
acter and career, 371, 377- 
386; health, 148, 149, 237, 
245, 246, 248, 249, 270, 
274, 287, 291, 316, 323, 

329. 335. 348, 367. 370; 
brought up a Baptist, 59 ; 
denominational fixity re- 
laxed, 77, 78, 130; Sab- 
batarianism feehng lessens, 
151 ; at Chardon Street Con- 
vention, 203-205 ; hetero- 
doxy increases, 208-212; 
anti-Sunday law convention, 
293-296; opposed to a cler- 
ical order and an ecclesiastical 
organization, 296 ; opposed 
to worship of the Bible, 
297 ; views on the atone- 
ment and the divinity of 
Jesus, 299 ; his essentially 
religibus nature, 300; leans 
to spiritualism, 300, 301, 365 ; 
the ecclesiastical elements in 
his character, 365 ; his in- 
fluence on American religious 
ideas, 374-376. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, Jr., 
son of Garrison, marries 
Ellen Wright, 355. 

Genius of Universal Emanci- 
pation, the, 60-66, 70-76. 

Giddings, J. R., a political 
abolitionist, 265 ; debates 
with Garrison, 267, 268 i 



INDEX 



401 



perceives effect of annex- 
ation of Texas, 279 ; at anti- 
siavery love-feast, 330. 

Gilliland, Joiin, 31. 

Gladden, Washington, 354. 

Globe, the. New York, incites 
pro-Southern violence, 279. 

Goodell, William, leaves Coloni- 
zation Society, 97 ; at or- 
ganization of American Anti- 
Slavery Society, in ; calls 
Garrison a Napoleon, 186; 
anli-Garrisonian, 192; author 
of Slavery and Anti- Slavery, 
192 ; leader in Liberty party, 
245 ; mentioned, 168. 

Gorsuch, Edward, killed by 
fugitive slaves, 286. 

Gradual emancipation, see 
Emancipation, gradual. 

Grant, Moses, conservative on 
anti-slavery, 79. 

Grant, Robert, speaker for 
Kynders mob, 283. 

Grant, U. S., Missouri votes for 
nomination, 338 ; Garrison 
supports, 357 ; administration 
referred to, 364. 

Greeley, Horace, 283, 357. 

Green, Beriah, leaves Coloniza- 
tion Society, 97 ; at organiza- 
tion of American Anti-Slavery 
Society, in; agent American 
Anti-Slavery Society, 115. 

Greenback- Labor party, 369. 

Greenleaf, Simon, converted 
from colonization, 97. 

Griffin, Sir Lepel, 140. 

Grimke, Angelina, see Weld, 
Angelina [Grimke], 

Grimk6, Archibald H., on Gar- 
rison, 378. 

Grimk6, Sarah, begins to lec- 
ture, 157 ; agitation for 
woman's rights, 160; Garri- 
son officiates at funeral, 366. 

Guerrero, Vicente, President of 



Mexico, emancipates slaves, 

73- 

Gulliver, John, owns New Eng- 
land Spectator, 162. 
Gurney, Samuel, 106, 199. 

" H. H.," see Jackson, Helen 
H. 

Harrison, W. H., 194. 

Hastings, Warren, 261. 

Hawkins, Sir John, 23. 

Haydon, Benjamin, 199. 

Hayes, R. B., 368. 

Hayne, R. Y,, desires suppres- 
sion of Garrison by law, 85 ; 
Webster's reply to, 166. 

Hayti, negro colonization in, 
70, 7 1 ; recognition of inde- 
pendence, 322. 

Hemans, Felicia D., 54. 

Henny, a colored woman, 53. 

Henry, see McHenry, Jerry. 

Hepburn, John, 26, 27. 

Herald, the, Newburyport, 52- 

Herald, the. New York, pro- 
Southern, 278. 

Herald of Freedom, the, aboli- 
tion paper, 234, 257. 

Heyrick, Elizabeth, immediate 
emancipationist, 375. 

Higginson, Henry, withdraws 
privilege of pew from Garri- 
son, 144. 

Higginson, T. W., 144 ; disunion 
abolitionist, 310; confidant 
of J. Brown, 312; contributes 
to Independent, 354. 

Hillard, G. S., his oratory and 
Garrison's, 260. 

Hoar, Samuel, 256. 

Holmes, Obadiah, 117. 

Homer, J. L., writes handbill 
inciting riot in Boston, 134. 

Hopedale community, 225. 

Hopkins, J. H., Bishop of Ver- 
mont, Garrison on, 363. 



402 



INDEX 



Hopkins, Samuel, 29, 30, 

Hovey, C. F., kindness to Gar- 
rison, 315 ; Hovey fund, 316, 
340. 

Howe, S. G., 56. 

Howitt, William and Mary, 
199. 

Hunter, David, military emanci- 
pation order, 324, 327. 

Hyacinthe, Pere, 355. 

Immigration, Chinese, 369, 
Impartial Citizen^ the, edited 

by S. S. Ward, a negro, 

284. 
Independent, the, New York, 

Garrison contributes to, 354- 

356. 
Indians, Cherokee, in Georgia, 
22, 90 ; atrocities against, 

362. 364. 
1 n ternational Anti-Slavery 
Conference (Paris), 353. 

Jackson, Andrew, 63, 64, 123, 

145- 

Jackson, Francis, Female Anti- 
Slavery Society take refuge 
at his house, 135 ; Harriet 
Martineau speaks at house, 
144 ; vice-president of Amer- 
ican Anti-Slavery Society, 
193, 247 ; death, 324 ; men- 
tioned, 168. 

Jackson, Helen Hunt (" H. 

H."), 355. 

Jay, John, 20, 31. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 29. 

Johnson, Andrew, Garrison's 
view of, 355. 

Johnson, Oliver, on pre-Garri- 
sonian anti-slavery, 34 ; a 
founder of New England 
Anti-Slavery Society, 92 ; 
acting editor of Liberator, 
104, 155, 182; biographer of 
Garrison, 104; ^^\\s, National 



Anti Slavery Standard, 195, 
340. 
Johnson, Samuel, 59, 224, 
journal of the Times, the, Ben- 
nington, Vt., Garrison edits, 

63. 

Judson, A. T., suit for libel 

against Garrison, 10 1. 

Kane, J. K,, 282. 

Kane, T. L., at Rynders mob, 
282. 

Kansas-Nebraska Bill, see Ne- 
braska Bill. 

Keith, George, opposes surren- 
der of fugitive slaves (1693), 
27. 

Kelley, see Foster, Abby 
[KelleyJ. 

Kendall, Amos P., holds back 
abolition documents in mail, 

131. M5- 

King, Leicester, 273. 

Kingsley, Charles, 355. 

Knapp, Isaac, associated with 
Garrison in youth, 55 ; editor 
Essex Courant, and Free 
Press, 56 ; partner of Garri- 
son in Liberator, 82 ; lodges 
with Garrison, 117; business 
troubles, 181 ; attack on Gar- 
rison, 237 ; Knapp' s Liber- 
ator, 238. 

Kossuth, Louis, non-committal 
as to slavery, 288. 

Lane Seminary, secession 
from, 125, 185, 265. 

Larcom, Lucy, 355. 

Laurens, Henry, 29, 

Lawrence, Abbott, at anti- 
abolition meeting, 124; op- 
posed for Congress by Garri- 
son, 126. 

Lay, Benjamin, colonial oppo- 
nent of slavery, 20, 27 ; asso- 
ciated with Franklin, 27, 30. 



INDEX 



403 



Leavilt, Joshua, leaves Coloni- 
zation Society, 97 ; an or- 
ganizer of American Anti- 
Slavery Society, 1 10 ; edits 
Emancipator, 247. 
Lee, R. E., Garrison opposes 

gifts to his college, 363. 
LeMoyne, F. J., declines nomi- 
nation on anti-slavery ticket, 
191. 
Letters on American Slavery, 

by John Rankin, 44. 
Liberator, the, Boston, cir- 
cumstances of establishment, 
81-83 » irritating character, 
83, 84 ; measures to prevent 
circulation in the South, 85 ; 
official organ New England 
Anti-Slavery Society, 94 ; in 
difficulties, 97, 1 18, 119; 
aided by S. E. Sewall, 139 ; 
Garrison's editorial work in- 
terrupted, 148 ; Knapp sole 
publisher, Burleigh acting 
assistant editor, 149 ; aided 
by Gerrit Smith, 150; sup- 
ported by Massachusetts Anti- 
Slavery Society, 153 ; the 
•• Refuge of Oppression," 
153; O. Johnson locum 
tenens for Garrison, 154, 
155, 158; attack of "Cler- 
ical Appeal'' on, 158-160; 
advocacy of non-resistance, 
178, 179; rescued from dif- 
ficulties, 182; plan to com- 
pete with HI Massachusetts, 
185, 186; Cradle of Liberty, a 
weekly Liberator, Alonthly 
Offering, a monthly issue, 
187 ; competition of Stand- 
ard, dangerous to, 194; 
Knapp strives to regain pub- 
lication, 237, 238 ; small cir- 
culation, 248 ; editorial as 
sistance of E. Quincy and 
Maria W. Chapman, 249 ; 



increasing deficit, 270 ; pro- 
posal to unite with Stand- 
ard, 323, 340; editorial 
assistance of Whipple, 
Quincy, May, 348 ; last num- 
ber, 349 ; mentioned, 339, 

372. . . ^ . , 

Liberia, recognition of inde- 
pendence, 322. 

Liberty Bell, the, 44. 

Liberty party, circumstances of 
formation, 181, 191, 192; 
come-outers oppose, 194, 239, 
245, 250, 253, 268; progress 
of, 201, 206, 207, 270 ; swal- 
lowed by Free-Soil party, 275. 

Lincoln, Abraham, his propa- 
ganda and Garrison's, 17, 
184 ; free-soil ideas, 273 ; 
•'house divided," 311 ; Gar- 
rison slow to make up mind 
about, 317 ; Garrison respects 
but does not appreciate, 320, 
321 ; caution in reference to 
emancipation, 322, 324, 325, 
327, 330 ; forecasts emanci- 
pation as a military necessity, 
331 ; radical abolitionists op- 
pose, and Garrison supports, 
336' 355 5 renomination, 338; 
Garrison visits, 339 ; reelec- 
tion, 340 ; news of death, 

343- 
Lloyd, A., maternal grandfather 

of W, L. Garrison, 47. 

Lloyd, Frances Maria, mother 
of Garrison, see Garrison, 
Frances Maria [Lloyd]. 

London Anti-Slavery Society, 
121. 

Longfellow, H. W., « Ode to 
Union," 277 ; mentioned, 97. 

Longfellow, Samuel, 97. 

Loring, E. G., aids Liberator, 
82 ; a founder of New Eng- 
land Anti-Slavery Society, 
92; buys Knapp's share of 



404 



INDEX 



Liberator^ 237 ; opposes dis- 
union resolutions, 250, 

Lotteries, condemned by Gar- 
rison, 60. 

Lovejoy, E. P., death, 163, 
164 ; Boston meeting of pro- 
test, 165, 166; importance of 
martyrdom to anti-slavery 
cause, 1 69 ; Garrison's blame 
of, 356. 

Lowell, j. R., on Edmund 
Quincy, 168; signs call for 
Chardon Street Convention, 
204; "Letter from Boston," 
230, 263 ; influence of Maria 
White on, 251 ; not a dis- 
unionist, 252 ; his anti-slavery 
papers and Garrison's, 252 ; 
view of Webster's 7th of 
March speech, 377. 

Loyson, Hyacinthe (Pere Hya- 
cinthe), 355. 

Lundy, B., peripatetic reformer, 
27 ; impressive personality, 
36 ; relations with Garrison, 
60, 65, 66, 70 ; edits Genius 
of Universal Emancipation ^ 
60 ; reception in Boston, 62 ; 
goes to Hayti with freed 
slaves, 70 ; denounces Texan 
annexation, 73 ; property des- 
troyed, 175; memory cele- 
brated, 330. 

Lunt, George, anti-abolitionist, 

145- 
Lyman, Theodore, Jr., mayor 
of Boston, presides at anti- 
abolition meeting, 124; at 
anti-Garrison riot, 135. 

Macaulay, T. B., 106, 
Macaulay, Zachary, 106. 
McDuffie, George, Garrison 

calls •' Nero," 149, 
McHenry, Jerry, rescued at 

Syracuse, 286. 
McKirn, J, M., at organization 



of American Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, III; Lowell's letter to, 
230; opposes disunion reso- 
lutions, 250; on Garrison's 
religious nature, 300; estab- 
lishes Freedmen's Aid Com- 
nii.^sion, 348 ; daughter Lucy 
marries W. P. Garrison, 367. 

Madison, James, 33, 

Mahan, Asa, president of Ober- 
lin, 265 ; debates with Gar- 
rison, 270. 

Manumission, 27, 28, 30 ; of 
slaves enlisted in Revolu 
tionary armies, 33. 

Marcy, W. L., Garrison calls 
" Domitian," 149. 

Marshall, Emily, admired by 
Garrison, 59. 

Martineau, Harriet, protected 
by F. Jackson, 126; defends 
Channing, 144; delegate to 
World's Convention, 197, 
198. 

Mason, Lowell, 67. 

Massachusetts Abolition So- 
ciety, anti-Garrison, 189. 

Massachusetts Abolitionist, the, 
competes with Liberator ^ 
186. 

Massachusetts Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, 149, 153, 155, 159, 
162, 185, 197, 227, 329, 336, 
346. 

Mather, Cotton, 54. 

Mather, Cotton and Increase, 
156. 

May, Samuel, Jr., raises testi- 
monial fund to Garrison, 
352 ; character of Garrison, 

379- 
May, S. J., hears Garrison, 
79 ; characterized, 80 ; at or- 
ganization of American Anti- 
Slavery Society, 1 1 1 ; per- 
forms marriage ceremony for 
Garrison, 117. 



INDEX 



406 



Mazzini, Giuseppe, 353. 

Mellen, G. W. F., at Chardon 
Street Convention, 204. 

Mennonites and slavery, 27. 

Methodist Church, 28, 32, 180, 
229. 

Mexico, war with, 258 ; effect 
of on the North, 272. 

Michigan Anti-Slavery Society, 
292. 

Middlesex Anti-Slavery Society, 
225. 

Mifflin, Warner, and wife, early 
opponents of slavery, 28. 

Miller, T. H., influence on 
Garrison, 53. 

Miner, Charles, and abolition 
in District of Columbia, 65. 

Missouri Compromise, a slavery 
triumph, 35 ; its repressive 
effect in New England, 221. 

Mobs and mob violence, 122, 
123, 1 3 1- 1 33; break up 
Crandall school, 99-10 1 ; 
break up meeting of New 
York City Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, 108 ; danger of violence 
to Garrison in Boston, 109 ; 
Garrison mobbed in Boston, 
134-138; death of Lovejoy, 
Alton, 111., 161-164, 169; 
Pennsylvania Hall, Philadel- 
phia, destroyed, 173; Marl- 
borough Chapel, Boston, 
threatened, 175 ; Broad Street 
riot, 175; Rynders mob, 
278-285 ; character of North- 
ern violence to abolitionists, 
285, 286; Phillips threatened, 
317 ; Foster and Garrison in 
western New York, 245 ; 
draft riots, 332; anti-negro 
riots, Detroit, 332. 
Monroe, James, 123. 
Morpeth, Lord, 199. 
Morris, Gouverneur, 31. 
Morris, Thomas, 265. 



Morse, Jedediah, 31. 

Mott, James, religious influence 
on Garrison, 77. 

Mott, Lucretia, religious in- 
fluence on Garrison, 77 ; at or- 
ganization of American Anti- 
Slavery Society, no; address 
at dedication of Pennsylvania 
Hall, Phila., 174; on com- 
mittee of American Anti-Sla- 
very Society, 193; delegate 
to World's Convention, 195. 

National Anti-Slavery Con- 
vention, 239, 329, 

National Anti-Slavery Conven- 
tion for Independent Voting, 
191. 

xVational Anti-Slavoy Stand- 
ard, the, 194-195. 201, 234, 

323- 

National Convention of Aboli- 
tionists, 190. 

National Intelligencer , the, 
pro-Southern paper, 85. 

National Philanthropist, the, 
total abstinence paper, Garri- 
son co-editor, 59. 

Neal, John, 63. 

Nebraska Bill, 304, 305, 308. 

Negroes, plantation, 22, 344 ; 
slaves in Massachusetts 
(1706), 25; early discussion 
of capacity, 31 ; Garrison's 
first ccmtact with, 53 ; Garri- 
son on denial of education to, 
60 ; negro in Liberator print- 
ing office, 82 ; agitation causes 
greater severity to, 87 ; plan 
for industrial college at New 
Haven, 89 ; anti-slavery activ- 
ity of free negroes, 93, 103 ; 
industrial college planned, 
loi; few at organization of 
American Anti- Slavery So- 
ciety, 1 10 ; subscribers to 
Liberator t 1 18 ; black laws in 



406 



INDEX 



free states, 278; enlistment, 
330 ; exodus from Mississippi 
and Louisiana, 370, 385 ; 
present condition of, 373, 
385 ; see Freedmen ; Recon- 
struction ; Slavery, 

New England Anti-Slavery 
Convention, 155, 176, 189, 
201, 227, 250, 337. 

New England Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, 92, 102, no, 149. 

New England Non-Resistance 
Society, 178, 179. 

New England Spectator, the. 
Clerical Appeals published in, 
159 ; advocates a new or- 
ganization, 162. 

New Hampshire Anti-Slavery 
Society, 257. 

New Organization, 191-196. 

New York City Anti-Slavery 
Society, 108, 194. 

New York City Library, 285. 

New York Peace Society, con- 
servative, 178. 

Newell, Charlotte, Garrison's 
aunt, death, 316, 

Newhall, P., 52. 

Newman, J. H., on heresiarchs, 
208. 

News Letter, the, Boston, on 
negro slavery in Massachu- 
setts, 25, 

Nietzsche, Friedrich, and Gar- 
rison, 378. 

No-government, executive com- 
mittee American Anti-Slavery 
Society opposed to, 160 ; Eng- 
lish feeling, 213; charged 
against Garrison, 214, 219. 

No-organization, Garrison op- 
posed to, 234. 

Non-resistance, Garrison 
preaches, 165, 183, 214-217, 
264,308,313; and disunion 
254 ; Uncle Tom a non-re- 
sistant, 289; the draft and 



non-resistants, 327 ; Garri- 
son's son not a non-re- 
sistant, 332 ; effect of war on 
Garrison's principles, 356. 

Noti- Resistant, the, 179. 

Northwest Ordinance, men- 
tioned, 43, 264. 

Northwest Territory, early con- 
nection with South, 41. 

Noyes, J. PL, influence on Gar- 
rison, 171 ; his doctrines, 215, 
216, 375. 

Oberlin College, 265 ; Gar- 
rison visits, 269. 

Observer, the, St. Louis and 
Alton, 163, 164. 

O'Connell, Daniel, Garrison 
meets, 106, 199 ; supports 
American anti-slavery cause, 
108 ; opposed to exclusion ol 
women delegates, 198; signs 
abolition address, 287. 

Old Organization, 19 1- 1 96. 

Oneida community, 171. 

Opie, Amelia, 199, 

Ordinance of 1787, 43, 264. 

Orthodox Congregational 
Church, see Congregational 
Church (Orthodox). 

Osgood, Samuel, 154. 

Otis, H. G., Garrison supports 
for Congress, 59, 63; response 
to demand for punislmient of 
David Walker, 73 ; response 
to demand for punishment of 
Garrison, 85 ; at anti-abolition 
meeting, 131. 

Owen, Robert, Garrison re- 
garded as a follower, 213. 

Palmer, Daniel, great grand- 
father of Garrison, 46, 47. 

Palmer, Mary, paternal grand- 
mother of Garrison, 46. 

Parker, Mary S., president 



INDEX 



407 



Female Anti-Slavery Society, 

135- 

Parker, Theodore, at Chardon 

Street Convention, 204; Gar- 
rison's view of, 299 ; and John 
Brown, 312. 

Park Street Church, Fourth of 
July speeches at, 67. 

Parrish, John, on slavery in 
District of Columbia, 39. 

Patton, J. M., gag-rule, 181. 

Peabody, George, Garrison on, 

Pease, Elizabeth, Garrison 
meets, 199. 

Pease, Joseph, 199. 

Peck, J. W., supports free-soil 
in Illinois, 42. 

Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, 363. 

Pennsylvania Gazette, adver- 
tisements of negro sales in, 

30- 
Pennsylvania Hall, Phila., ded- 
ication and destruction of, 

'73- 

Pennsylvania Society for Pro- 
moting the Abolition of Sla- 
very, 40. 

Perfectionism, 171, 189, 215- 
217, 

Phelps, A. A., leaves Coloniza- 
tion Society, 97 ; at organiza- 
tion American Anti-Slavery 
Society, 1 1 1 ; on W, E. Chan- 
ning, 142; answers Clerical 
Appeal, 158; anti-Garrison- 
ian, 184, 186, 193, 205, 213. 

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 355. 

Philadelphia Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, 197. 

Phillips, Ann T. [Greene], wife 
of Wendell, delegate to 
World's Convention, 197. 

Phillips, Wendell, on Garrison's 
importance, 44 ; his power to 
irritate, 84, 141 j more ex- 



treme than Garrison, 94 ; so- 
cial standing, 126; joins 
abolitionists, 154, 163-167 ; 
moves to admit women dele- 
gates to World's Convention, 
197 ; leader in disunion 
movement, 242, 249, 254 ; 
violence threatened, 285, 
317; public influence in- 
creases, 328 ; at anti-sla- 
very love-feast, 330; opposes 
dissolution of anti-slavery so- 
cieties, 345-347 ; president of 
American Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, 347 ; opposes Lincoln, 
355 J lay-pastor at abolition 
funerals, 366 ; supports 
Greenback-Labor party, 369 ; 
address at Garrison's funeral, 
370; his eloquence, 381. 

Phonography, 303. 

Phonotypy, 362. 

Phrenology, Garrison examined, 
152; Garrison interested in, 
301. 

Pickering, Timothy, Garrison 
supports, 55. 

Pierpont, John, 67 ; new or- 
ganizationist and Sabbatarian, 
205 ; opposes disunion policy, 
250. 

Pillsbury, Parker, extreme Gar- 
risonian, 227 ; Lowell's char- 
acter of, 230, 231 ; his account 
of Douglass's Nantucket 
speech, 233 ; opposes Lincoln, 

337- 
Polk, J. K., 256. 
Price, Thomas, Garrison speaks 

in his chapel, 107. 
Prohibition, 360, 361. 
Prostitution, regulation opposed 

by Garrison, 362, 
Public Liberator and Journal 

of the Times, the, Garrison's 

prospectus of, 77. 
Purvis, Robert, at organization 



408 



INDEX 



of American Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, III. 

QuiNCY, Edmund, social stand- 
ing, 126; joins abolitionists, 
167 ; editor National Anti- 
Si av er y Standard, 1 95 ; 
leader in disunion movement, 
242; comments on Garrison, 
247-250, 302. 

Quincy, Josiah, Jr., and Boston 
mob, 136. 

Rankin, John, 44. 

Rawle, William, 31. 

Reconstruction, abolitionists and 
Lincoln's plan, 336 ; division 
among abolitionists as to, 345- 
347 ; Garrison on Johnson's 
plan, 355. 

Recorder, the, Boston, on the 
anti-Sabbath convention, 296. 

Remond, C. D., negro anti- 
slavery lecturer, 195- 199. 

Renan, E., 170. 

Republican party, and Liberty 
party, 192 ; Garrison adheres 
to, 256, 357 ; Garrison's re- 
ception of, 309 ; repudiates 
John Brown, 314; carries out 
slavery guarantees, 317, 318 ; 
has no policy to meet seces- 
sion, 319; change of view 
toward abolitionists, 329 ; 
renominates Lincoln, 337 ; 
supports Thirteenth amend- 
ment, 338. 

Revenue Reform League, 357. 

Rice, David, 31. 

Ripley, George, at Chardon 
Street Convention, 204 ; 
founds Brook Farm, 225. 

Rogers, Ezekiel, 236. 

Rogers, N. P., leaves Coloniza- 
tion Society, 97 ; joins Gar- 
risonians, 126; delegate to 
World's Convention, 195 ; a 



no-organizationist, 224 ; more 
violent than Garrison, 227 ; 
editor Standard and Herald 
of Freedom, 234 ; excursion 
to White Mountains with 
Garrison, 234-236 ; excur- 
sion in Connecticut Valley, 
248 ; estrangement from Gar- 
rison, 257 ; messages from 
spirit world, 301. 
Roman Catholic Church, 281, 

362, 377- 

Rousseau, J. J., 2S9. 

Ruggles, David, his Northamp- 
ton water-cure, 274. 

Rush, Benjamin, 29, 30. 

Russell, Lord John, 352. 

Rynders, Isaiah, breaks up 
meeting of American Anti- 
Slavery Society, 230, 279- 
285. 

Sabbath, breaking of assailed by 
Garrison, 60 ; Chardon Street 
Convention discusses, 202- 
205 ; Garrison's observance 
of, 217; convention against 
Sunday laws, 293-296 ; Gar- 
rison's influence on current 
American sentiment regard- 
ing. 375- 

St. Clair, Alanson, anti-Garri- 

sonian, 185. 

St. Monica Home for Colored 
Women and Children, 351. 

Sanborn, F. B., judgment of 
Garrison, 377. 

Sandiford, Ralph, 20 ; associa- 
tion with Franklin, 27, 30. 

Schaff, Philip, 354. 

Scott, Dred, effect of decision, 

3". 

Seabrook, W. B., pro-slavery 

pamphleteer, 34. 
Sewall, Samuel, 24, 26. 
Sewall, S. E., hears Garrison, 

79 ; devotion, 81 ; objects to 



INDEX 



409 



cut of slave auction in Liber- 
ator, 83 ; a founder of New 
England Anti-Slavery Society, 
93; social standing, 126; aids 
Liberator^ 139; ceases to be 
a political " come-outer," 20i. 

Seward, W. E., on the " irre- 
pressible contiict," 311 ; Gar- 
rison criticizes, 319. 

Shadrach, fugitive slave, 286. 

Shaw, R. G., colonel first negro 
regiment, 331. 

Shipley, Thomas, at organiza- 
tion of American Anti-Sla- 
very Society, iii. 

Short, Moses, Garrison's ap- 
prenticeship to, 52. 

Simms, Thomas, fugitive slave, 
remanded from Boston, 286. 

'* South-side View of Slavery," 
156. 

Spiritualism, Garrison on, 300. 

Sprague, Peleg, speaker at anti- 
abolition meeting, 131. 

Stanton, E. M., 341. 

Stanton, Elizabeth [Cady], 
wife of H. B. Stanton, 185. 

Stanton, H. B.,anti-Garrisonian, 
185, 186 ; plans for anti-sla- 
very party, 190. 

Stewart, Alvan, leaves Coloniza- 
tion Society, 96. 

Stiles, Ezra, early colonization- 
ist, 30. 

Stone, Lucy, at Oberlin, 270. 

Stone, W. L., editor Commercial 
Advertiser, 107, 

Storrs, C. B., leaves Coloniza- 
tion Society, 87. 

Story, Joseph, 95. 

Stowe, Harriet [Beecher], 
Uncle Tom's Oibin, 289 ; 
corresponds with Garrison on 
infidelity, 300. 
Stringfellow, B. F., 308. 
Stuart, Charles, British aboli- 
tionist, 103, 106; visits 



America, I2i; agent for 
American Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, 152 ; opposes Old Or- 
ganization in England, 202. 

Sumner, Charles, on Garrison's 
speeches, 260 ; his '< The 
True Grandeur of Nations," 
360 ; Garrison's obituary of, 
364 ; oratory of, 38 1 ; men- 
tioned, 357. 

Sumner, W. G., on humanita- 
rianism, 147. 

Sussex, Duke of, ignores Garri- 
son, 107. 

Sutherland, Duchess of, (Harri- 
son meets, 199. 

Swan, James, 29. 

Swift, John, mayor of Phila- 
delphia, 175. 

Swift, Zephaniah, 31. 

Taney, R. B., 287. 

Tappan, Arthur and Lewis, 
property attacked, 122; 
burned in effigy, 13O; op- 
posed to come-outerism, 189. 

Tappan, Arthur, pays Garrison's 
fine, 76 ; sends Garrison 
^1,000, 85; urges industrial 
college for negroes, 89 ; 
leaves Colonization Society, 
96 ; protects Garrison, 105 ; an 
organizer of American Anti- 
Slavery Society, lio; first 
president American Anti- 
Slavery Society, 115; disap- 
proves Garrison's violence, 
119; leaves Garrisonianism, 
138 ; first president Amer- 
ican and Foreign Anti-Sla- 
very Society, 193 ; reconcilia- 
tion with Garrisonians, 330. 

Tappan, Lewis, at organization 
of American Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, III, 112; disapproves 
Garrison's violence, 119; 
disapproves relations of Lib- 



410 



INDEX 



erator and Massachusetts 
Anti-Slavery Society, 159 ; 
disapproves Garrison's an- 
swer to Clerical Appeal, i6i, 
162 ; leads in forming New- 
Organization, 193. 

Tariff, of abominations, 36 ; 
Garrison supports " American 
system," 77, 94 ; Garrison a 
free trader, 357-360. 

Taylor, " Father " E. T., 204. 

Taylor, Zachary, 282. 

Texas, Annexation of, early 
date of movement, 73, 147 ; 
recognition of independence, 
169 ; imminent, 256; grounds 
of, 258 ; influence upon North- 
ern sentiment, 271. 

Thatcher, George, on essential 
sinfulness of slavery, 35. 

Theatre, Garrison on the, 218. 

Thirteenth amendment, 338, 
340, 341, 348, 385. 

Thompson, George, Garrison 
meets, 106; Hrst visit to 
America, 121, 122, 124, 132, 
133. '35 J returns to Eng- 
land, 134, 139; cause aided 
by his extrusion, 140 ; irri- 
tates American sensibility, 
140, 141 ; wishes to avoid 
" woman question," 198 ; 
invites Garrison to visit Eng- 
land, 262; justifies slave in- 
surrection, 284 ; second visit 
to United States, 287, 337, 
342, 344 ; last meeting with 
Garrison, 368 ; on Garrison's 
character, 379 ; mentioned, 
144. 

Thomson, Samuel, his medical 
theories, 275, 302, 

Tilden, D. R., debates on Con- 
stitution with Garrison, 267. 

Todd, Francis, his suit for libel, 

74-77- 
Torrey, C. T., anti-Garrison 



abolitionist, 185; secretary 
Massachusetts Abolitionist 
Society, 189; attacks Garri- 
son, 213; assails Old Or 
ganization, 245 ; imprison- 
ment, repentance, 256. 

Tracy, Joseph, anti-Garrison 
abolitionist, 184. 

Transcendentalism, Garrison 
and, 173, 376; a pestilent 
heresy, 205. 

Transcript, the, Boston, Gar- 
rison's anti-slavery communi- 
cation, refused, 79. 

Trollope, Frances M,, 22. 

Trowbridge, J. T., 354. 

Truman, Ilanbury, Buxton & 
Co., brewers, io6. 

Tucker, St. George, 31. 

Turner, Nat., insurrection of, 
86. 

Underground Railroad, the, 
265. 

Unitarian Church, 80. 

Ursuline Convent, Charles- 
town, Mass., destroyed, 123. 

Van Buren, Martin, aboli- 
tionist sentiment as to can- 
didacy, 190, 194 ; nominee 
of Free-Soil party, 273 ; Gar- 
rison's feeling toward, 274. 

Villard, Helen Frances [Garri- 
son], birth, 257 ; marries H. 
Villard, 352; Garrison dies 
at residence of, 370. 

Villard, Henry, 257, 352. 

Walker, Am as a. Garrison 

votes for, 126. 
Walker, David, autlior of 

" Walker's Appeal," 73, 85. 
Ward, S. S., speech at Rynders 

mob, 284. 
Ware, Henry, Jr., suggests re- 



INDEX 



411 



visory committee for Garri- 
son, 119. 

Warner, C. D., 354. 

Warren, Joseph, 165. 

Washburn, Royal, on early anti- 
slavery movement, 22. 

Washington, George, 33. 

Wayland, Francis, on Boston 
mob, 138. 

Webb, Alfred, " D. B.," of the 
Nation^ 200, 

Webb, Hannah, Garrison's af- 
fection for, 200. 

Webb, J. W., editor New York 
Courier and Enquirer ^ 109. 

Webb, R. D., on Garrison, 45, 
200, 354, 379; mentioned, 
247, 302. 

Webster, Daniel, election to 
Senate, 59, 166; on Coloni- 
zation Society, 95 ; not at 
anti-abolition meeting, 131 ; 
his support of Compromise of 
1850, 276, 277 ; eloquence, 

381. 

Webster, Noah, 31. 

Webster, Samuel, 29. 

Weld, Angelina [Grimke], be- 
gins to lecture, 157 ; agitates 
for woman's rights, 160; 
married to T. D. Weld, 174, 

Weld, T. D., leaves Coloniza- 
tion Society, 96 ; leads se- 
cession from Lane Seminary, 
125, 265; agent American 
Anti- Slavery Society, 152; 
marries Angelina Grimke, 
174. 

Wesley, John, 32. 

Western Anti-Slavery Society, 
264, 

Western Reserve Convention, 
190. 

Weston, Anne W., sister of 
Maria Weston Chapman, 179. 

Weston, Harvey E., on Garri- 
son's medical notions, 302. 



Weston, Maria, see Chapman, 
Maria [Weston]. 

Whig party, 201, 268. 

White, Maria, betrothed of J. 
R. Lowell, 25 1; on aboli- 
tionists, 251. 

White, N. H., editor A'ational 
Philanthropisty 59. 

White, W. A., opposes disunion 
resolutions, 250. 

Whitetield, George, 30, 31, 48. 

Whittier, J. G., Garrison and, 
58 ; urges Clay to pay Gar- 
rison's fine, 76; at organiza- 
tion American Anti-Slavery 
Society, 1 1 1 ; poem to Gar- 
rison, 112; opposed to raising 
" woman question," 152, 176; 
" Ichabod " and Longfel- 
low's " Ode to the Union," 
277 ; mentioned, 168. 

Wilberforce, William, 102, 106, 
108. 

Williams, Roger, 24. 

Wihnot Proviso, 264, 276. 

Wilson, Henry, 363, 364. 

Winslow, Emily, delegate to 
World's Convention, 197. 

Winslow, Isaac, backs Garrison 
financially, 97 ; at organiza- 
tion of American Anti-Slv 
very Society, ill. 

Winslow, Nathan, ill. 

Winthrop, R. C, 381. 

Woman's rights, beginnings of 
the agitation, 157, 158, i5o; 
Garrison's support, 171, 21 3; 
Garrison's individualism and, 
222, 364. 

Women, aid in social advance- 
ment insisted on by Garrison, 
60 ; political agitation dep- 
recated by Garrison, 72; at 
American Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, 1 10 ; opposition to 
women lecturers, 157, 366; 
the •* woman .question " ia 



412 



INDEX 



anti-sJavery societies, 176, 
188, 189, 190, 192, i9S» 197. 
213; admitted to Peace Con- 
vention, 177. 
Women, suffrage of, Garrison 
in favor of, 361, 369; prob- 
ability of attainment, 371, 

385. 

\\'oolman, John, 20, 22, 26, 27. 

World's Anti-Slavery Conven- 
tion, the, 195, 197-198. 

Wright, Elizur, Jr., on effect 
of " Thoughts on African 
Colonization," 96 ; an or- 
ganizer of American Anti- 
Slavery Society, no; secre- 
tary for domestic correspond- 



ence, American Anti-Sla- 
very Society, 115; on Garri- 
son's severity to friends, 162; 
opposed to Garrison's come- 
outerism, 189. 

Wright, Ellen, see Garrison, 
Ellen [Wright]. 

Wright, H. C, preaclies non- 
resistance, 1 60 ; on Liberty 
party, 192; violently anti- 
clerical, 227 ; leader in dis- 
union movement, 241 ; at 
Garrison's sick bed, 270 ; 
supports Lincoln, 337 ; Gar- 
rison at funeral, 365 ; spirit 
communication from, 365. 

Wythe, George, 31. 



3lt77-2 



